


The Best of Both Worlds

by catherineflowers



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Book/Fanon!Jaime, F/M, You might call it a fix-it?, but it's a gentle thing, i did a thing, show!Brienne
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:00:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27877238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: Two universes. Two different lives. Jaime and Brienne both think their love story is over, but it's just beginning.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 223
Kudos: 226





	1. Unbidden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainTarthister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainTarthister/gifts).



> It's CaptainTarthister's birthday fic! Thank goodness I finished the last one on time. Hope you enjoy it, dear!

**~ Jaime ~**

The babe was near a moon old when Jaime received a letter bearing King Aegon VI Targaryen’s seal.

Tyrion brought it to him, along with dinner, and a flagon of wine that turned into two, which turned into strongwine, which turned into an argument.

Was the king, Jaime argued, too cowardly to talk to his Hand face-to-face?

Tyrion insisted that wasn’t fair. Had His Grace, or Jon as he preferred to be hailed, not tried to talk to Jaime? A week after the babe was born, Jon had ventured to the White Sword Tower, back when Jaime was still pacing the floors, when his head throbbed all day and all night, when he thought he might die from the pain alone.

The king had been all Northern stiffness, all monosyllabic in his dutiful commiseration. Jaime had all but howled in his face. Sent him scurrying back to his part of the keep.

Now, Jaime picked up his scroll and tossed it to his desk in the solar, where there was a mountainous pile of unread correspondence. Tyrion put the wine down and picked the letter up again. Used his thumbs to break the seal, unrolled it and read the contents on behalf of his brother.

“He just wants to know how you are,” Tyrion said, gently.

“How does he _think_ I am?” Jaime snapped.

Tyrion bit his lip. “Angry,” he suggested. “Vengeful. Drunk most of the time. Is he wrong?”

Jaime swallowed the rest of his glass. “Perhaps he should appoint another Hand.”

“He doesn’t want to.”

“He’ll have to. Sooner or later. I’m not up to the task any more.”

“Just give it some –”

“No! Tis over, Tyrion. We struck a bargain, Jon and I. Twas all to be about –”

“Checks and balances,” Tyrion finished for him. His little brother all but rolled his eyes. “I recall.”

“Yes! I was to be his. A man not cowed by loyalty or honour, a man who would kill his king to save a city … that’s what he said he wanted.”

Tyrion nodded. “You were a good choice. You still are.”

“But – but … _Brienne_ …” Was it the first time he had said her name aloud? He stumbled over it now, the very syllables of it like a sword through his tongue.

“Brienne was supposed to be _yours._ Your checks and balances.”

Jaime poured more strongwine, and his hand trembled on the flagon.

In the next room, the babe began to cry. Jaime jerked to his feet, the chair he had been sitting in crashing to the floor behind him.

“Sit down,” Tyrion said. “Eat your food.”

“The babe...”

“Has a wet nurse. And a night nurse and a nursery attendant.”

“I’m his father!”

Tyrion swallowed. Looked up at Jaime with huge eyes.

Jaime shook his head. Held up a hand that was no longer there. He didn’t – he hadn’t _meant_ to –

“So ... you have a _son_?”

Jaime took a slow breath. It was the first time he had called the babe _him_. He couldn’t – he hadn’t been able to _bear_ –

He picked up the chair and sank into it. Slowly, slowly. Covered his face with his hand.

“Does – does my nephew have a name?”

Jaime shook his head. His throat was strangling him. He could barely breathe.

“Did you not ... think of one?” Tyrion’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Did you not decide with Brienne? Before?”

Jaime moaned – he could make no words now. His hand was soaked already – he had no idea he could cry so much. Once he started, tears just _gushed_ out of him, endlessly, for hours at a time.

Tyrion put a soft hand on his shoulder. Patted him once. Twice. Poured him another drink.

  
  


**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne looked up from the ale she supped politely, in the tavern she hadn’t wanted to go to.

“Why not?” asked the man she didn’t want to be sitting next to. He wore a guardsman’s tabard – the bars of a deputy gate captain no less – and he was handsome of face if a little buck-toothed. He had introduced himself as Ser Prestan Cratter. And then, he had propositioned her.

More ale in his billet, he promised. Privacy, a comfortable bed. He’d even let Brienne go on top, if it pleased her.

On the other side of the room, half his face buried in the teats of a tavern wench, Lord Bronn of Highgarden gave a double thumbs up. Ser Podrick grinned, too.

So this was their game, was it?

“Do you not see the colour of my cloak?” she snapped at Ser Prestan.

The man laughed. “I did not ask for your hand in marriage, my lady, only if you wished a quick tumble in my bed. Your friends –“

“ – should know better!” she finished for him. Ser Podrick wore the white cloak as well, and Lord Bronn was to be wed in less than a moon’s turn, to get heirs for Highgarden.

“I am a discreet man,” Ser Prestan protested. “And I like to think myself a good lover. I promise you would not leave unsatisfied.”

“That is – that is not my concern, Ser. And … _completely_ beside the point! I am Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, am I not?”

“You are.”

“Kingsguard must swear a vow –”

“I can see that you take it very seriously, too.”

“Yes. Yes, I – I do.”

Ser Prestan’s face reddened from his chiselled jaw to his sparkling blue eyes. “Then … my pardons, Ser Brienne. I did not intend to impugn your honour.”

He clunked his mug of ale against hers and got up. Brienne watched him go, the torchlight in his flaxen hair, his leather breeches tight against his thighs. A good-looking man, yes. But …

Across the room, Bronn’s eyes were wide, his mouth open in disbelief. He pushed the tavern wench’s teats off his face, and marched to Brienne’s table, throwing himself into the seat that Ser Prestan had vacated.

“What’s wrong with him?”

Podrick sat down beside Bronn, clearly well in his cups. The chair wobbled unsteadily and almost unseated him.

“Wrong with who?”

“Ser Prestan bloody Cratter, that’s who. A knight. A handsome blond knight. Who I have seen in the bathhouse, and let me tell you … he has a bloody big cock.”

Brienne swirled her ale. “I took a vow.”

“A vow not to marry or bear a child. No vows about fucking. Don’t you like fucking?”

Brienne drank. Deeply.

Bronn continued to stare. “Why don’t you like fucking? Wasn’t old golden bollocks any good at –”

“I like it,” Brienne interrupted before he could finish that sentence. “I like it fine. But I took a vow.”

“So did every other Kingsguard who ever wore that bloody cloak. And I bet there wasn’t a single one of them who didn’t go in for a damn good fucking when it suited them.”

Brienne scoffed.

“You don’t agree?”

“Barristan the Bold? Ser Arthur Dayne? Duncan the Tall?”

“You’re just proving my point.”

“What point? How?”

Bronn leaned in with a rueful grin on his face. “You might know all about knights, Ser Brienne. But you really haven’t known enough _men_.”

Brienne stood up. Raised herself to her full height and pulled on her jerkin to straighten it. “Goodnight, Lord Bronn,” she said, and left.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime went to bed.

There wasn’t much point – the sun was about to come up over Blackwater Bay, and soon his chambers would be full of the sound of busy servants. Preparing his breakfast, laying out his clothes. Tending to the babe.

He hoped they woke him – he could shout, then. Be unreasonable, scream at someone for daring to rattle a cup or a plate or for not closing a drawer quietly enough when he was trying to sleep. Shouting felt good; anger felt good. Better than the pit of empty agony that sat in his guts all day and all night. Being angry gave him a moment of respite.

He stripped himself naked and slipped between the soft, warm sheets. It wasn’t right. He got out of bed again, put on a nightshirt. Adjusted his pillow. Closed his eyes.

Brienne. The moment the blackness took him, she was there.

She was in bed with him, her warm, strong arms going around him from behind. Her snoring breath in his hair, her muscular legs tucked behind his. It felt so good it _hurt_. All Jaime wanted was for Brienne to be here, sprawled over the bed with her huge body, make him too hot and too close to the edge, he wanted her weight to make one of his limbs go to sleep, he wanted to be irritated by her snoring.

He wanted _her_.

And then he was awake to the dawn light, and the tears were on him again. The blinding, sickening unfairness of it all, too. He sat up in the empty bed and wept into his hand.

He shifted to Brienne’s side of the bed. Buried his face in her pillow, breathing so deep it made him lightheaded, just wanting to catch her scent.

All he could smell was his own tears. His own sweat. The vague metallic scent of all the blood from that terrible day.

Jaime got up again. Weeping as he paced the floor of his bedchamber.

Was this his bedchamber? It was the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard’s chamber, and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was dead. He supposed a new one needed to be appointed, and he should move elsewhere. Perhaps that would help? Or perhaps it would drive him mad, to move away from the only place in this godsforsaken city that still smelled like Brienne. Like her blood, anyway.

In the next room, he heard the babe start to fuss. He lurched for the door, but there was someone already there. Doubtless it was that gormless wet nurse Tyrion had appointed, cramming the babe’s mouth with one of her pendulous teats. Jaime could not even recall her name.

So he scrubbed his face in the washbowl, thought about shaving but couldn’t bear to look at himself in the mirror for that long; he let his beard grow another day. He pulled yesterday’s clothes back on and left his long hair loose and tangled. He had no heart to care for how he looked.

He wandered aimlessly to the dining room, but of course, there was no breakfast yet. It was too early – the servants hadn’t even been to clear away the plates from his meal with Tyrion the night before.

Jaime banked the fire himself to keep the chill at bay, and in the dancing orange light, his eyes fell upon the letter from the king.

Tyrion had left it on the table, unsealed and unrolled. Jaime picked it up, almost intending to throw it into the fire.

Instead, he read it.

_My Lord Hand,_

Jon had written in a surprisingly pretty script. Then, obviously feeling the need to be more familiar, he had written

_Jaime –_

beneath.

_I fear I have been next to useless to you in your time of need, and this troubles me greatly. Brienne’s passing came as such a shock to us all, and I did not know how I could help you. I cannot imagine the pain you must be feeling._

_I hope that your child is well and thriving. I hope that you have found some measure of solace in your son or daughter. Please – know that your grief is shared by us all, know that you have friends and support when you are ready to receive them. No man should bear such sorrow alone._

_You are missed, but we shall wait as long as you need._

_Your friend, always,_

_Jon_

A nice letter. Kindly meant. The kindness of it made Jaime cry again, bent double over his dining table, wracked with painful sobs. Gods, would this infernal weeping never stop?

There were near a hundred more letters just like it on his desk, from lords and dignitaries, royalty and landed knights, no doubt all sending sympathies and extending courtesies. Some would be perfunctory of course, but those who had known Brienne, those who had fought beside her, they would be full of genuine sorrow. Jaime had not been able to face them.

Each one would make it more true, more real, more factual that Brienne wasn’t coming back. Jaime was too craven for that by far.

But he carefully cleared them to one side now, sitting down at his desk for the first time in a moon. He drew out some parchment from a drawer. Found his quill and filled his ink.

_Jon,_

He wrote, taking time with each letter. Making sure his lumpen left-handed script was at least legible. Then, thinking that was probably a little informal, he wrote

_Your Grace_

beneath. He took a breath before writing again, and when he began, it poured out of him, as fierce as his tears.

_I do not want all of this terrible, terrible grief._

_I do not want it. I want my wife back, the woman I waited a lifetime for, the woman who saved me from death, the woman who took me as I was and loved me anyway._

_I do not understand. How could such a love end this way, less than a year after we wed? How could such a warrior, a woman who cut down swathes of the dead with Valyrian steel, who stood fearless by my side at the end of all things … how could she have died on the birthing bed?_

_It does not seem possible. It is unfathomable._

_I fear I will never get over it. My life is a small, shrunken thing without Brienne by my side. I think I would follow her into the Stranger’s arms if I did not need to be a father now._

_And yet how do I be a father? How can I find the strength?_

_I have a son. I have a son. I can barely write the words – I can not say them out loud._

_She never held him. I do not think she even saw him. How can I look on my babe’s face when I know that? I am wracked by the guilt of it – I feel as though I have stolen something from her._

_Brienne I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m_

He stopped. Shoved it all away from him with a terrible moan, spilling the ink all over the letter and the desk, breaking his quill, ruining it completely. What was he thinking? He could not write all that to Jon, let alone send it. Where was the propriety?

His king would think him unmanned by his grief. Perhaps demand that he see a maester. That would never do.

Jaime picked the letter up, dripping ink as he went, and threw it into the fire. All of it. Stood and watched it burn.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne woke with a start, her hand flying to her hip for her sword.

Oathkeeper, of course, wasn’t there – she was in bed, dressed only in her sleeping shift. Her sword adorned the hip of her armour on the other side of the room.

Someone had dropped something.

Not in her bedroom, outside in the Lord Commander’s chambers somewhere. Something had fallen over, and the sound had woken her.

It was morning. Early, by the look of the wan light twinkling the dew on the city roofs. No one should be in her chamber yet.

She got out of bed. Tripped over the boots she had not tidied last night. She pulled Oathkeeper from its scabbard and tiptoed out of her bedchamber.

All was silent beyond.

The hallway. The reception room. Both empty. The windows were closed; not so much as a curtain blew in the breeze. Something, though –

Something was not quite right.

Brienne crept down to her dining room, Oathkeeper brandished before her. She nudged the door open with her right foot.

Someone had been here – she could tell instantly. There was a smell in the room, the smell of a person, skin, hair, breath—a warmth to the air. Almost as if a fire burned in the grate, though there was nought but yesterday’s cold ashes.

The door to her solar stood ajar. Had she closed it last night? She felt sure that she _had_.

Inside was only silence, her desk piled with reports – patrol reports, drill reports, security reports. Applications to fill the remaining spaces on the Kingsguard.

But –

Ink. Across her desk, a spilt puddle of it. Dripping onto her chair, dripping on the floor.

She let out a cry and dashed for a towel. Mopped up the spill, stopped the dripping. So this had been what she heard? There were enough rats all over the keep that one could have got onto her desk, she supposed. Knocked over her inkwell.

But the inkwell was upright. Near-full, as well. This hadn’t come from there.

Just then, she heard Cayson and Cayle, her squires, enter her chambers to prepare her breakfast. They were squabbling again – perhaps one of them had knocked over the inkwell? Perhaps they had come in before she woke to start their chores?

She made them both jump by appearing in the dining room, still wielding her sword.

“Ser!” cried Cayson, almost dropping her breakfast tray.

Cayle _did_ drop the basket of kindling he carried.

“Have either of you been in my solar this morning?” she asked.

“N-no, Ser,” said Cayson.

Cayle shook his head too. “We just arrived, Ser.”

“Hmm. I heard … hmm. Perhaps it _is_ a rat.”

“A rat, Ser?”

Something spilt ink all over my desk. I’ve cleaned it up, but …”

She trailed off, suddenly aware that both boys were very pointedly _not_ looking at her. Suddenly aware that she was quite naked beneath this thin shift, that she had not laced it before falling into bed last night.

Brienne resisted the urge to sigh. Cayson and Cayle were both highborn, a pair of twins from Estermont who did well with the sword, but struggled with literally every other task they were given. Somehow, they managed to make even Podrick in his first days as her squire look competent; at least he had been eager to learn. It was painfully obvious these two had never made a pot of tea, or scraped a plate or cleaned boots before. And at five-and-ten, they were equally uncomfortable with the fact that they squired for a woman.

She did not recall getting wide eyes or stammers from Podrick when she bathed in front of him, and if his hands had brushed her thigh or breast as he had fastened her armour, then he had never reacted. He certainly hadn’t snatched his hand away as if it were burnt.

“Well, I’ll … I’ll dress for breakfast, then,” she told her squires.

“Yes, Ser,” mumbled Cayle, looking very closely at the pile of kindling he was stacking in the grate. On top of yesterday’s ashes, despite her repeatedly reminding him to clean them away first.

Brienne went back to her bedroom. Made her own bed and found her own clothes. Washed at her washbowl, brushed her hair.

She made sure the laces on her tunic were tightly tied and donned a leather jerkin over it. Perhaps that would help keep Cayson and Cayle’s minds on their tasks.

She hated how her body did that in the company of men, even near-boys as her squires were. Of course, there was no desire in it, only the fact that she was female that made them so very awkward.

That was the problem with being both knight and lady – the men around her didn’t know which to treat her as. She wanted it not to matter, to have her body be an irrelevant fact, but even now, even here, even as the avowedly celibate Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, even as a woman too old to wed and bear a child, her body was a bloody _issue_.

Something to be careful of, something to treat with caution. Something that made Brienne different, even when she really wasn’t.

The men really didn’t know how to act around her.

Mostly, they didn’t bother. Mostly, she was left out of things, cast as their scolding mother, a killjoy and a stick-in-the-mud.

Not unfairly, she had to admit. On many occasions, she had been shocked by the drinking, whoring, and general debasement of the Kingsguard. Several times she had expressed her disapproval to the men under her command.

The men had been utterly perplexed – this was normality for them, as it was for the men in the City Watch, the men in the private guards, the men on the High Council.

Lord Bronn was of the opinion that Brienne couldn’t beat them, so she might as well join them. He genuinely believed that if he got her drunk enough, if he had her fucked enough, that she would turn a blind eye to the abuse, the poverty, the misery that the city’s brothels and taverns had caused in the wake of the dragon queen’s destruction of the capital.

As Lord Bronn and Lord Tyrion never tired of reminding her, the men had their battle-glory, their trauma, their grief. The men needed to carouse and drown their sorrows and clutch at their pleasures. Who were the Small Council to deny them?

But it seemed to Brienne that it was the city’s women who paid the price. The wives who were drunkenly beaten, the brothel-workers who were raped and robbed. Not a week had passed since Brienne took up her post that a woman had not been killed somewhere in the capital. An old washerwoman stabbed by her thieving son last week, a trader caught up in a street brawl just yesterday. Brienne still had sleepless nights about the four-year-old girl who had chased out after her drunken father and had been killed by a speeding horse.

Everywhere she went, there were grieving women. Flea Bottom near-reverberated with the sounds of sobbing, and the mass graves full of dragon-charred corpses always had a crowd of women weeping atop them. Children in their arms, children at their breasts. Empty blankets that had once held children clutched against them.

Women left behind, crying.

Their anguish did not sit easily with Brienne. She was a woman grown and had seen the horrors of war first hand, but this ... Keeping the peace in a city of this size had revealed an ignoble side to men of all classes that she found difficult to bear and difficult to hear excused and encouraged.

For all the excitement of the new king, the new Small Council, the new way of doing things, it did not change the fact that the city was fundamentally a broken thing. The Lannisters, the Dragon Queen … the deaths, the horror, the ever-changing game of thrones that had played out here for so long had piled death upon death, cruelty upon cruelty. It would take more than taverns and brothels for their peace to return.

Perhaps it would never be the same again.

There was a tentative knock on her bedroom door. She opened it to see both her squires, looking flushed and distressed.

“What’s amiss?” she demanded.

“Your breakfast, Ser,” said Cayle. His eyes slid nervously to Cayson.

“It’s ready?”

“Yes, Ser. But uh …”

“What is it?”

“The carpet, Ser. The rug. In the uh … in the dining room.”

“What of it?”

“Caught fire, Ser.”

“It caught _fire_? How?”

“I think something fell out of the fireplace, Ser. Some wood. I was pouring the tea at the time.”

“Did the fire not have the guard on? The grate?”

“No, I – I forgot that, Ser.”

“Of course you did.”

“The fire’s out, Ser. There’s not much damage. Just –”

“Just what?”

“A hole. In the rug.”

Brienne sighed. Those carpets were beautiful. Finely crafted, probably walked on by hundreds of prestigious knights. A part of the profound history of this tower. “Never mind.”

She followed her squires into the dining room to break her fast.

**~ Jaime ~**

“Sit down,” Tyrion demanded.

“Sit down? Why?”

“Because you’ll need to.”

It was later now, and as had become a habit over the last week, Tyrion had stopped by the White Sword Tower to break his fast with his brother. To check up on him. To make sure he wasn’t busy running a sword through his own guts, Jaime supposed.

Jaime sat.

Tyrion took a breath. He sat too. Clenched a fist on the tabletop. “Lord Selwyn Tarth.”

“What of him?”

“He’s … he’s on his way to the capital. Set sail this morning, by all accounts. He’ll be here in a few days, weather permitting.”

“Unannounced?” Jaime asked. “Uninvited?”

“I had rather wondered if _you_ had invited him.”

Jaime shook his head. “I most certainly did _not_.”

Then, the servants came in with a platter of diced bacon and scrambled eggs to place in the centre of the dining table. A flagon of red wine, too, despite how early it was. Jaime and Tyrion sat in silence while they were served. Jaime chewed his lip.

“Do you know what he wants?” Tyrion asked as soon as they were alone again.

Jaime chewed his bacon. It was not good – it tasted like ashes in his mouth.

“Lord Selwyn,” Tyrion repeated. “What does he want?”

Jaime put down his fork and closed his eyes. His head felt like it was spinning. “His daughter.”

“Brienne? What? Oh. You mean he wants her – her bones?”

There were six letters from the Sapphire Isle still sealed on Jaime’s desk. All had arrived within the last three weeks. All bore the seal of the Evenstar. Jaime had read the first one – it had been enough. “He believes that she would have liked to be laid to rest on Tarth.”

“Would she?”

“I know not! We had never discussed such a thing – she was so young!”

Tyrion took a sip of his wine. Sat back in his chair to regard his brother. “Tarth is a beautiful place. And … twas her home.”

“No!” The word exploded out of Jaime like wildfire. Tyrion’s eyes went wide. “No,” Jaime said again, far more gently. “She’s my wife, she belongs with me.”

“Where?” Tyrion asked. “Here, in the city? Casterly Rock? She’s never even been there …”

“I know! I know that. I – I hadn’t thought … I haven’t been able to think …”

“Would Tarth be such a bad possibility? Tis beautiful there, I’ve heard.”

“No,” Jaime said again.

“What are you going to tell him? He’s a grieving father.”

“As I am a grieving husband. My wife stays with me!”

Tyrion nodded. “If that’s your wish …”

Jaime swallowed the rest of his wine. Pushed his plate away, mostly untouched.

Tyrion kept his eyes on his own plate while he picked up some more bacon. He chewed it for a long time before speaking again. “Will you … will you be allowing him to see his grandson?”

All Jaime’s breath left his body in a shuddering gasp. It was not something he’d even thought of. “I …”

“The babe is Lord Selwyn’s heir,” Tyrion reminded him. “And … the only grandchild he will ever have.”

“And my heir! The heir to Casterly Rock, to all the Westerlands. I think that takes precedence over some tiny backwater island seat, do you not?”

Tyrion looked quite shocked. “Jaime … do you not like Brienne’s father?”

Jaime waved his hand. Tears felt dangerously close _again_. “I’ve barely met the man.”

“At your wedding?”

“Twas the only time. You were quite drunk, little brother. I’m surprised you recall.”

“I recall _that_. Brienne and her father seemed … close.”

“Close,” Jaime scoffed. “Yes. They’re one of _those_ families. The ones who _hug_.”

“Now you sound like _our_ father.”

Jaime scoffed again. Poured himself some more wine.

“Oh,” Tyrion said then. There was a sudden glint of mischief in his eye. “Of course.”

“Of course what?”

“You don’t dislike Brienne’s father. You’re jealous of him.”

“Jealous? Tyrion, what –”

“I should have known—a man with a claim on a woman you love? I should be surprised if you don’t backhand his Lordship down a flight of stairs.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Hmmm.”

“Tyrion, _stop_.”

“He won’t understand, Jaime. People who weren’t raised as we were don’t. He’ll think you’re being obstructive. Cruel. Heartless.”

“What –”

“You don’t have to prove you loved her above everyone else. Brienne’s memory is not your exclusive possession.”

“That – that’s not –”

“Perhaps … perhaps sharing your grief, with someone else who loved her …”

“That’s not it, Tyrion! Tyrion I don’t –”

“He’s her _father_. A father who has now lost _all_ his children.”

“I know that.”

“Then please, Jaime. Talk to the man. Help him, and for the gods’ sakes, let him help _you_.”

“I …” But his words died in his mouth.

“Promise me that you will at least _try_.”

Jaime sighed. “I will think on it.”

Tyrion leaned over the table. Squeezed Jaime’s remaining hand. “I have to go, I have meetings. Someone has to do your job for you.”

“I – I am grateful for it.”

“I know.” Tyrion slid off his chair, still holding Jaime’s hand. “I will see you for dinner, perhaps?”

Jaime nodded. “Bring more strongwine?”

“I will see what I can find.” He let go of Jaime’s hand with a final squeeze. Turned to leave. He took a couple of steps and then stopped, and frowned.

“What?” Jaime asked.

Tyrion poked at something on the floor with his toe. “What happened to your carpet?”

Jaime stood up to see what his brother was talking about. There was a large burn hole in the rug by the fireplace, burned right through in a couple of places. “I have no idea!”

“Time to question the servants, I think!”

With that, his brother left, leaving Jaime alone once more. Alone with his thoughts, with the impending arrival of Brienne’s father.

_Talk to him._

Jaime shook his head. How in the name of the gods was he supposed to do that? He could not talk to his king, to his friend, to his own brother.

But Selwyn Tarth, who he had never spoken more than a handful of politely-worded sentences to, _him_ Jaime was meant to bear his soul to?

Tyrion was an idiot. He knew Jaime little. Who had the Kingslayer ever been able to talk to? Who had he told his darkest secrets to, who had he trusted to see him as he truly was?

Only Brienne. Only _ever_ Brienne.

The thought made him sob anew. And of course, then he couldn’t stop, and he had his face buried in his arms on the table, and the tears poured from his eyes again.

“I just miss you so much,” he whispered, in case Brienne’s shade could hear him somehow.

Now, who was the idiot? Chattering away to a dead woman.

It felt good, though. Comforting somehow, as if Brienne had just slipped into the room and wrapped him in her big, strong arms. She felt so close he could feel the warmth of her body.

“I love you, Brienne,” he whispered into the still air of the dining room.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne looked up from her breakfast with a start.

“What did you say?” she asked Cayson, who was pouring her wine.

Cayson started; he looked behind himself, to make sure Brienne was speaking to him. “Me, Ser?”

“Yes. I –”

“Nothing, Ser. I didn’t speak.”

Brienne put down her fork and dabbed her mouth with her napkin. She had heard – _no_. Of course she hadn’t. But there was that scent again, the one she had caught earlier this morning. Warmth too, like another body was right beside hers.

She had not wanted to admit it earlier, but the smell was familiar, intensely so. It should be – Brienne had spent near a moon inhaling deeply of it, burying herself in it, gasping it, licking the taste of it from sweating skin.

She stood up. Pushed her breakfast plate away and told Cayson that she was no longer hungry. Near-dashed on wobbly legs back to her bedchamber, closed the door and pressed her burning face against the cool wood.

 _Jaime_.

It was the smell of Jaime. Of Jaime’s hair, of Jaime’s body, Jaime’s clothes … of Jaime Jaime _Jaime_.

Brienne pushed those feelings away. Hard away. No. She couldn’t think … she couldn’t _feel_ that way about Jaime. He was near seven moons in his grave now, dead in the arms of the woman he loved, and Brienne … Brienne had her vows.

She had come to terms with Jaime. He was a part of her past.

Perhaps Cayson used the same hair oil Jaime had. The same perfume, the same soap? Something like that. It was disturbing that she’d had such an intense reaction to it, but … it had taken her unawares, that was all.

She splashed her face in her washbowl. Brushed her hair again and donned her own armour, not having the patience to ask her squires to do it and watch them be terrified of the fact she had teats.

Without daring to go back in the dining room, Brienne left the White Sword Tower to go and guard the king.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime went to the solar.

Perhaps he intended to open the scrolls from Lord Selwyn, perhaps he intended to burn them unread, to spite Tyrion. He wasn’t sure.

He knew he wanted to talk to Brienne, and he felt foolish speaking aloud in the dining room. But even in the privacy of the solar, where he knew no wet nurse or servant would go, it felt like the tremulous edge of insanity.

So he wrote her a letter.

Her desk was clear, of course – a dead woman had no need of correspondence, someone else must be dealing with all of the Lord Commander’s duties right now.

Someone had cleaned the ink he’d spilt on his own desk, so he sat there, amid the letters he couldn’t open, the letters he knew he would never answer, and wrote a letter to someone who could never answer _him_.

 _Brienne_ ,

he wrote.

_Even writing your name at the top of the parchment unmans me. I sit here trembling like a craven boy at the sight of it._

_Brienne_

he wrote again—the strokes of his quill a caress.

_Brienne Brienne_

_I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I’m not the man you thought I was. You would think me pathetic as I write this. You should._

_Pathetic I am, dragging myself through empty days and tortured nights, filled with nothing but thoughts of you. It’s agony. I can’t bear it._

_I have never been more angry at the gods. Every time I see a man with his wife, every time I see a couple in love, hear laughter in the streets, I find myself angrier still. How dare the world go on without you?_

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

_The worst thing is I know that if you saw me now, you wouldn’t treat me as pathetic, not at all. That’s always who you are. You would pick me up from my sobbing, force me to my feet and tell me to keep going, that I have to keep going for the sake of our boy. You would call me a good man, and you would show me how to find my strength._

_But Brienne, I cannot be strong without you._

_I was not meant to live this life without you._

_Yours (as I will remain for the rest of my days)_

_Jaime_

A ridiculous letter. Jaime had wailed like a madwoman throughout – it was wild and dramatic and gods … there was something in it that sounded like his sister at her most drunken and vile.

But Brienne had seen him at his worst before. She had seen it all and still offered him her beautiful, beautiful heart. He’d learned to trust that. Even in death, she would be kind.

Jaime wasn’t much good at rolling up a scroll with only one hand, so he did what he always did and folded the parchment in half, and in half again. He sealed it with his personal seal, a Lannister lion with a hand atop it.

He got up and left the wax drying in the morning sunlight.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne stood outside the king’s bedchamber, bedecked in her beautiful golden armour and black gambeson, one hand wrapped about Oathkeeper’s hilt.

To her left, Ser Podrick shifted his feet. Shifted his weight to his other leg—the third time in less than a minute.

“Ser,” she remanded him. “We are guarding the king.”

“Sorry,” he whispered. “Just my ... my arse. It’s gone numb.”

“Mine too,” she confessed.

“Did you ever consider that we might not be best able to defend the King with numb arses?”

Brienne bit her lip. Pod had a point.

“I don’t know about you,” he whispered, “but I’d struggle to get into stance right now.”

“I could do with a visit to the privy, too,” Brienne confessed. She had been so distracted by her thoughts of Jaime that she hadn’t remembered to make her water before she went on duty.

Then, because she hadn’t finished her breakfast, her belly rumbled, the sound echoing down the corridor.

Podrick giggled. Brienne did too.

“Stop,” she grinned. “This isn’t very decorous.”

“No,” Podrick agreed. But his round face was covered in an irrepressible grin. “I suppose this is the reality of guarding a king all day. Not as exciting as it sounded in the songs, is it?”

“Not really,” Brienne was forced to admit. “But … tis a great honour.”

“Of course,” Pod agreed. “I wouldn’t change it.”

Suddenly the doors behind them opened, and the king emerged, his chair pushed by his personal maester. He was dressed in a coat with a collar of black fur, his face its usual tranquil, expressionless self.

“Your Grace,” said Brienne with a bow.

“Your Grace,” said Podrick, half a heartbeat later.

“Good morning, Ser Brienne. Ser Podrick,” said Bran Stark. “I will be visiting Lord Tyrion this morning to break my fast, and then I will spend some time in the gardens, attempting to find Drogon again. I lost sight of him over Volantis a week ago – no one appears to have seen him since.”

“Very good, your Grace,” Brienne nodded.

The maester started to push the wheelchair down the corridor, and Brienne fell into step behind. But then – Bran held up a hand to halt them all.

“Your Grace?” asked the maester.

“Not you, Ser Brienne,” the king said. “Ser Podrick can accompany me this morning.”

“I – of – of course, Your Grace,” Brienne stammered. She felt colour flush her face.

“I believe you have something waiting on your desk?”

“Ah … the Kingsguard applications? Yes, yes, Your Grace. They are rather urgent, tis true.”

“Come along, Ser Podrick,” Bran said, and beckoned for the maester to push him again.

Brienne watched them disappear down the hallway, the trundle of Bran’s wheels and the rattle of Pod’s armour growing fainter as they got further away.

She was puzzled. The Kingsguard applications had only just come in. There were more she was expecting yet. They were urgent, but not _that_ urgent. Not urgent enough to leave the king with only one guard today.

Had His Grace perhaps heard her conversation with Podrick outside the door? Had he dismissed her so that she might relieve her bladder and finish her breakfast?

It was rather embarrassing, in any case.

Brienne trudged back to the White Sword Tower, and up the seven flights of stairs to her chambers. All was quiet and still – her squires would be elsewhere until the midday meal was served.

She considered removing her armour, but technically, she was still on duty, was she not? Doing the bidding of the king?

She did visit the privy, and took the opportunity to eat a couple of honey cakes that were left on the side from last night’s dinner. Her belly full and her bladder emptied, Brienne headed for her solar and the stack of scrolls that sat on her desk.

Another one had arrived, she noticed as she took her seat, carefully draping her white cloak over the back of the chair as she sat down—a folded, sealed letter that sat in the middle of her desk.

She picked it up and broke the seal. Unfolded it and spread it out to read before her.

“Gods!” she cried aloud, near falling off her chair in her hurry to get away from her desk. She jumped to her feet, her hand going for Oathkeeper on instinct alone.

The letter – she knew the handwriting. Knew it well.

_Brienne_

it started.

_Brienne Brienne Brienne_

_I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I’m not the man you thought I was. You would think me pathetic as I write this. You should._

_Pathetic I am, dragging myself through empty days and tortured nights, filled with nothing but thoughts of you. It’s agony. I can’t bear it._

_I have never been more angry at the gods. Every time I see a man with his wife, every time I see a couple in love, hear laughter in the streets, I find myself angrier still. How dare the world go on without you?_

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

_The worst thing is I know that if you saw me now, you wouldn’t treat me as pathetic, not at all. That’s always who you are. You would pick me up from my sobbing, force me to my feet and tell me to keep going, that I have to keep going for the sake of our boy. You would call me a good man, and you would show me how to find my strength._

_But Brienne, I cannot be strong without you._

_I was not meant to live this life without you._

_Yours (as I will remain for the rest of my days)_

_Jaime_

Jaime! Jaime …

How in the world? How … what? This could not be happening, it could not be real. It could _not_!

With a horrified cry, Brienne fled the room, and slammed the door behind her.


	2. Into The Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few days after THAT letter ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **~ Brienne ~**

Days passed.

Brienne spent them as she should have done: guarding the king. Training her squires. Writing reports and reviewing the candidates for the empty positions on the Kingsguard.

Ignoring the fact that sometimes, her chambers smelt of Jaime.

Ignoring the wet bootprints by her door one rainy morning, just his size. Ignoring the fact that often, her chair was already warm when she sat in it. Ignoring the letter.

The letter.

The letter sat in a drawer in her desk. She had hidden it there lest one of her squires, or one of the Kingsguard, or she herself, saw it.

She had not been able to go back to her solar for more than an hour after she had found it. When she had, she had only been able to pick it up with the merest of fingertips. Only been able to drop it into the drawer, bundle papers on top of it, slam the drawer shut.

She had not read it again. She had not even thought about it. Not once, not at all.

That night, though, Brienne had dreamed of Jaime.

Not a vivid dream, not a sex dream or a fighting dream or a dream where she convinced him to stay. But a dream where he was _there_.

In the bed beside her, just the form of him. The weight of his body on the mattress, the warmth of his skin on the sheets.

Brienne had woken, sweating and shaking, thinking for a moment that she was about to be violently ill. But the cold, dark, comforting reality of her empty bed brought her back to her senses. She was a Kingsguard. She’d sworn an oath. She was _safe_.

So, days passed.

And then there was another letter, from another man.

This one was not sitting on her desk. Instead, it was handed to her by a page as she made her way through the keep. This one was rolled and not folded. This one bore the seal of the Evenstar.

_My dearest daughter,_

It began.

_It is Maester Orlyn who has bade me write this letter to you. I wish it were a missive enquiring of your health, or to ask how life fares in the capital. I am sure you look most handsome in your white cloak, and I know that you are performing your duties with diligence and honour. No father could be more proud of his daughter than I._

_Which is why it shames me to write what I must write._

_My retainers, particularly dear Orlyn, fear for my health. It is true that this winter has not been kind to my body; I am after all four-and-seventy, and I grow tired so easily. My legs hurt when I stand too long, and I have been forced to admit that my riding days are behind me. Growing old is not an easy truth to face._

_All around me, my loyal advisors are pushing me to name an heir._

_The obvious choice is, of course, your cousin Trevas. He is an able man, a good diplomat, and he knows Tarth and her people and loves them as I do. I know I would leave my beloved Evenfall in capable hands._

_So why do I hesitate?_

_Is it because your cousin is not named Tarth? He is my sister’s son, so no less of our line, but it is true that he would be the first Evenstar without our natural name. As much as it should not, that pains me. I sired four children, loved them all dearly. I want our island to continue of my blood, in the Tarth name, as it has since the dawn of days._

_But please know that vanity is not my only reason. Trevas is a good man indeed, but he has left Tarth only twice in his lifetime, and he has never ventured beyond the Stormlands. This worries me – a leader should know whom they negotiate with, they should have experience of the world, and they should know hardship as well as luxury. They should know the cost of war and starvation, they should understand what it truly means to keep them at bay._

_My darling, as much as it was difficult to see you go, this was one of the reasons I gave my blessing for you to join Lord Renly in his bid to rule the Seven Kingdoms. I knew that you would leave a girl and return a woman, a strong and capable ruler for our people. I must confess I did not imagine that you would choose to never return at all._

_I know that it is dishonourable to ask this of you, that it would bring shame to you to ask for a release from your holy vows, but I will ask it anyway, because I must. You are my only living child, and I could not think of a wiser, stronger, more benevolent Evenstar to lead our people._

_My dearest Brienne, would you return home, and take your rightful place as my heir?_

_I hope with a loving father’s heart that you will consider it. I hope it for our people’s sake, as well. Many others could lead the Kingsguard, but there is only one Tarth left to be the Evenstar._

_Know as always my darling that I will love you whatever decision you come to._

_Your father,_

_Selwyn Tarth_

Brienne read the letter. Read it again. Rolled it up and shoved it into her belt. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime sat alone in his solar, his quill in his hand. An empty parchment lay unrolled before him, and black ink dried on the nib of his pen.

He had been trying to write this for days.

Every time, he had failed.

A few times, he had got as far as

_Lord Selwyn,_

or sometimes

_Dear Goodfather,_

_I regret to inform you that I will be unable to_

But there was no good way to finish that sentence. He had run the gamut of lies in his head already – a feigned illness, too much work, having to leave the capital on urgent business … none of them would deter the Evenstar for long. None would force his return to Tarth.

Jaime had thrown the letters into the fire every time.

Now, it was too late.

Tyrion’s page had just informed him that Brienne’s father had arrived in the city. Right now, Lord Selwyn was being shown to guest chambers, being fed and attended to. He could be fobbed off a little, for maybe an hour or two. Any longer would be rude.

Jaime did not want to be rude to his goodfather.

He didn’t, he truly didn’t. He understood how distraught the man must be, how he must be struggling to make sense of his strong, capable daughter’s death. The gods knew Jaime understood _that_.

It wasn’t that he denied it.

But... What was he to _say_? How to act? Was he expected to console his goodfather, be consoled himself? Being Tywin Lannister’s son had never prepared him for this.

What if Selwyn Tarth wanted more than conciliatory words? Dear gods, what if he _blamed_ Jaime?

Why would he not?

It had been Jaime’s seed that had killed Brienne, after all. Had she not lain with him, had she not wed him, she would be alive. Whole, hearty. Smiling that clumsy great smile full of teeth that felt like a stab to the guts to remember.

He loved her. Oh gods, he loved her so much.

He was crying again, he realised. Wracked with sobs, his head pressed to the parchment he couldn’t bring himself to write on.

There was a knock at the door. Jaime lifted his head; the parchment was stuck to his face.

“Enter!” he called, pulling it off. His voice was a cracking, whiny squeak.

It was Tyrion. Who else would it be? His brother came into the solar, picked up a wine flagon and poured Jaime a generous glass.

Jaime drank. “He’s here, then?”

Tyrion looked as though he had come to lead him to his execution.

“In the gardens. He’s asked for an audience.”

Jaime nodded. He stood. Pulled his jerkin down to straighten it. “How do I Iook? “

“Like a man who has not slept for a moon and wept all morning.”

Jaime ran a hand through his tangled curls, his overgrown beard. “Accurate, then.”

He followed his brother out of the solar.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne entered her solar, the letter still in her belt. Cayson followed her, a glass of wine on a tray.

“It’s the middle of the morning,” she told him. What did he think of her, that she was some kind of drunk?

“Yes, Ser?” His eyes were on her desk. On an empty glass of wine that sat there.

“That’s not mine!” she protested.

“No, Ser?” Cayson asked. There was a heavy note of doubt in his voice.

“It’s not. Look … it’s not even one of our glasses.”

It was a crystal goblet with a golden base, just like those belonging to the White Sword Tower. But instead of the golden sword running the length of the stem, there was a lion curled about it.

A lion. It must have been left over from the Lannisters’ reign.

She picked it up and shoved it at Cayson, near knocking the tray from his hands. “Take – take it,” she said. “It’s not mine, I don’t want it in here.”

“No, Ser. Of course, Ser.”

He all but scurried to the door.

“I don’t want to be disturbed, either,” she told him.

Brienne sat down. Took the letter from her belt and unrolled it with shaking hands. She reread it. And then for a third time. Maybe turning down the wine was a mistake after all.

But this had to be done. Quickly, too, before she thought on it too much.

She pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment. Dipped her quill in her ink.

_Dear Father,_

she wrote.

_Your letter found me well, though it saddened me to read. I have so many happy memories of the rides we used to have in the Maidenwood – to hear that you can no longer sit a horse is sorrowful news indeed._

_Your offer, too, saddens me. You know I love Tarth with all my heart, and being your heir means more to me than I have ever told you. I would be lying if I told you that there isn’t a part of my soul that would dearly love to swap the tiresome intrigue of courtly life for the chance to be back in my beloved home._

_But the truth of the matter is this: I could not be the heir you need, Father. Even if I were as wise and strong as you think I am, there is more to being the Evenstar than that. There would be duties to our family that I am sad to say I could not carry out._

Brienne stopped writing for a moment. Gazed out of the window at the city below—half a million people. Half a million people less ten thousand. Burned and buried in a pile. In a pit.

_My duty would inevitably be to marry,_

she wrote next.

_to produce an heir if we were to see the Tarth legacy continue. But I could not marry, Father. I could not. I could not bear it. I could not love a man, nor let him in my bed, nor live close to him every day. I was not made for love or to be loved, and the pretence of it would hurt too much._

_Those are the bones of it. I know it and I have made my peace with it._

_The Kingsguard is a noble choice for one such as me, and ultimately will spare our house dishonour. Trevas is very much a more suitable heir than I could ever be._

_I am sorry I must disappoint you, Father. But I hope that a plain statement of the truth will be kinder than a lie._

_Your loving daughter, as ever,_

_Brienne_

She stared at the letter for a long moment, waiting for the ink to dry before she would roll it. Seal it. Perhaps it was too much? There was something about it that sounded too personal, almost. Almost as if she were writing about Jaime, which of course, she was not.

Did her father know about Jaime?

She had not wanted to think about that. She did not know how her father would feel if he knew – the subject of her bedding a man out of wedlock had never come up between them. Had it never seemed like a possibility?

Brienne got up. Put some wood in the fire, poked it around until it caught. Watched the flames catch it, char it, change it.

Bedding a man had never seemed like a possibility to her, either, wedlock or not. Not up until the moment Jaime had told her he was taking her shirt off.

She remembered it now, the slight smile on his face, the warmth of his fingertips, the leap of her heart in her chest.

_I’m taking your shirt off_

She had never heard his voice sound that way before. She had never heard _anyone’s_ voice sound that way before. Soft. Breathy. Warm. Rich with desire.

Desire. Jaime had _desired_ Brienne.

If only he hadn’t. If only.

She could have married, been content. Done her duty as a wife and as the Evenstar. Birthed babes. Made her father happy.

Everything would have been so much easier if she hadn’t _known_.

How wonderful it was to hold hands with someone who desired her, his fingers laced with hers. The softness of two palms, the squeeze of fingers, the rub of his thumb. The shivers of _want_ when he looked at her.

She remembered being shocked to her core at the feeling of Jaime’s tongue touching hers. How wet, how tender, how very carnal it felt to kiss that way. She just hadn’t understood that such wonderful, visceral intimacies existed before she had shared them with Jaime.

Without Jaime, she would have gone the whole of her life without knowing how she loved having her neck kissed, without knowing that the backs of her knees were very sensitive to tickling, playing fingers. Without knowing that she had a delicious cunt that was a delight to eat and that she loved so very much to have it eaten. That love felt like the best of everything, and that life was an endless, miserable drudgery without it.

She could have _managed_.

Damn Jaime to the Seven Hells, and Cersei with him. Nothing was the same after him, nothing at all.

Her eyes went to the drawer of her desk. The drawer where _it_ was. That letter. The letter she had been trying to ignore, the one she wanted to pretend had never happened.

What was it? She didn’t understand, and hadn’t wanted to, either.

She glanced at the door, making sure it was closed. Making sure she couldn’t hear her squires in the dining room beyond, too.

Then she sat down, and with shaking hands, opened her drawer.

**~ Jaime ~**

Selwyn Tarth sat on a carved bench in the royal gardens, in the sunshine, looking at the trees.

His long, grey-streaked blond hair blew in the breeze, his bright blue eyes sparkled. Just the way Brienne’s had done, like sapphires and the sea. For a moment, Jaime was quite transfixed.

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Tyrion whispered at Jaime’s side.

Jaime shook his head.

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Stop worrying, brother. I promise – I won’t backhand him down a flight of stairs.”

“As if I could stop you anyway.”

Jaime shrugged.

Tyrion turned to leave.

“What am I going to say?”

Tyrion turned back. Took hold of Jaime’s hand. “Just explain. He’ll understand – he knows it was no match of convenience, yes? That you loved her?”

The past tense. It felt like a slap. “I … yes.”

“Then … _tell_ him. Tell him how you feel, tell him how hard this has been. Tell him you can’t bear the thought of him taking her bones far away from you.”

“I’m her husband! He has no _right_ –”

“I’ll come with you,” Tyrion said.

He kept hold of Jaime’s hand as they walked through the gardens. Up to the bench where Lord Selwyn sat watching the trees.

He stood up as he saw them approach, and he was taller by far than Jaime remembered – bigger, too. For all Tyrion’s fears, and all of his fifty-eight years, Lord Selwyn was more like to backhand Jaime down some stairs than Jaime was him.

Jaime’s voice deserted him. All he could see was Brienne.

Brienne’s blue eyes, Brienne’s soft chin, her crooked teeth – her father shared them all.

“Lord Selwyn,” Tyrion greeted, when Jaime just gaped at the man, his mouth moving like a landed fish. “I hope your journey was pleasant?”

Lord Selwyn nodded. “Please, call me Selwyn.” His eyes did not leave Jaime.

“Thank you,” Tyrion said. “And I am Tyrion.”

“Oh,” Lord Selwyn said. “Look at you. Jaime …”

And then suddenly Jaime found himself bundled into a huge embrace, all warm arms and squeezing and a massive clap on the back that all but knocked the wind out of him.

“You poor man,” Selwyn said. “You poor, poor man.”

Jaime was _gone_. All it took was a kind word, and he just dissolved. He broke down and sobbed uncontrollably on Lord Selwyn’s shoulder, grasping him, hugging him, never wanting to be let go.

“It’s all right,” Selwyn soothed as if he were talking to a small child rather than his fully grown goodson. “There there. We’ll make it all better now.”

**~ Brienne ~**

The letter was real.

It was still there. Brienne plucked it from her drawer with nerveless fingers. Dropped it to the desk.

She sat like that a moment, both hands clenched into fists either side of it. It was still folded.

Perhaps it was blank. Perhaps she had completely imagined the writing on it, the signature too. Perhaps she had just misread it, or mistaken the handwriting. When she opened it, she would feel foolish, panicking for days over receiving a letter from a dead man.

It was the most likely explanation.

Brienne unfolded the letter.

_Brienne_

_Even writing your name at the top of the parchment unmans me. I sit here trembling like a craven boy at the sight of it._

it began.

_Brienne Brienne Brienne_

It did look like Jaime’s handwriting. The mess of it, the smudge from his left hand. The slant of his letters, carefully-formed from a hand that was not long-practiced.

_I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I’m not the man you thought I was. You would think me pathetic as I write this. You should._

_Pathetic I am, dragging myself through empty days and tortured nights, filled with nothing but thoughts of you. It’s agony. I can’t bear it._

Brienne swallowed. It sounded like him, too. Quite … dramatic? Jaime had tended towards the dramatic when upset. But why would he ever have written these words?

_I have never been more angry at the gods. Every time I see a man with his wife, every time I see a couple in love, hear laughter in the streets, I find myself angrier still. How dare the world go on without you?_

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

It made little sense. All the apologies … all the anger. What did he mean by the world going on _without her_?

_The worst thing is I know that if you saw me now, you wouldn’t treat me as pathetic, not at all. That’s always who you are. You would pick me up from my sobbing, force me to my feet and tell me to keep going, that I have to keep going for the sake of our boy. You would call me a good man, and you would show me how to find my strength._

This part really confused her. He was sobbing? And … their boy? Had he meant Podrick? But Pod was hardly a boy and never _theirs._

_But Brienne, I cannot be strong without you._

_I was not meant to live this life without you._

_Yours (as I will remain for the rest of my days)_

_Jaime_

Brienne sat for a moment, trying to make sense of it. It was Jaime, of that she had no doubt. She could hear his voice as she read the words.

The first question was when he had written it? He had been in King’s Landing only briefly after Winterfell, less than a day according to what she had heard.

He’d escaped the dragon queen, made his way through the city. Somehow managed to kill Euron Greyjoy on the beach and then...

Well, he hadn’t had the time, much less the inclination, to be writing letters to _her_. Certainly not ones full of apology and remorse.

So had he written it before? Before he left for Winterfell, after the meeting at the Dragonpit perhaps? He had spoken to her quite harshly then, and clearly reconsidered his position shortly afterwards, as he’d ridden for Winterfell within a day.

This seemed a little over the top for that, though. Angry at the gods, calling himself pathetic, and … sobbing?! It had been a minor spat. Even Jaime couldn’t have been this dramatic about _that_.

There was another thing, too – everything in the letter was spelt correctly. Jaime struggled with his words, and under stress, he often transposed letters or left them out entirely. It made no sense that a letter like this, with all its urgent painful content, would be written so well.

Brienne got up again. Poked the fire again. Added another log just to be sure.

Then she opened the door and called for her squires.

Cayson and Cayle ran in, almost tripping over their own feet to stand in front of Brienne’s desk. They stood fidgeting, as if waiting to be admonished for something.

Brienne walked back behind her desk and held up the letter. Keeping the written side away from them so they could not read what it said or who it was from.

“This was on my desk a few days ago,” she told them. “Which one of you put it there?”

They glanced at each other. Then at the letter. Then back at each other.

“You – you get a lot of correspondence, Ser,” said Cayle.

“Yes, but this is different. It was separate from all the others, right in the middle of my desk. And … folded, not rolled into a scroll.”

That alone would have been different enough to make it memorable, she thought.

“I don’t remember it?” said Cayson.

“Nor I,” said Cayle. “Who is it from? Perhaps we could ask their servants, Ser?”

“If it was on my desk, then one of you must have put it there.”

“Might have been a maid, Ser? Or a washerwoman? If we were in the yard or something?”

That was true – most oft, the servants did the quickest and most convenient thing when running errands like delivering messages. Asking a nearby washerwoman to slip it onto Brienne’s desk would have been faster than trying to find a squire in the yard across the keep.

It would be hopeless to try and track it in that case.

“Right,” she said, waving a hand to dismiss them both. “Never mind, then.”

They scurried from the room.

**~ Jaime ~**

Selwyn bought another round of drinks. And another.

They had started on wine, like the honourable lords they were, then moved to strongwine, like the fearless warriors they were inside. Now they slugged down cheap ale like the drunken messes they wanted to become.

“To Brienne!” Selwyn cried, holding his ale aloft. Some of it slopped onto his sleeve.

“To Brienne!” cried Tyrion.

“To Brienne!” cried everyone in a five-table radius around them – all the people Selwyn had been buying drinks for all morning. He’d gathered quite a crowd.

Jaime sobbed. He drank some more, to his late wife’s memory, but still, he sobbed. It had taken his fifth drink for him to finally give up the pretence that the Hand of the King wasn’t crying in front of the smallfolk. Truthfully, he hadn’t really stopped weeping since Selwyn had pulled him into his embrace, and the alcohol hadn’t exactly helped him keep control.

“I knew you were suffering,” Selwyn told him, putting a huge hand onto Jaime’s back. “You didn’t answer my letters.”

“I –”

“I know,” his goodfather commiserated. “I remember it well. My Ella – Brienne’s mother – she died too, you know. Fell from a horse when Brienne was but a babe. After that I couldn’t read a letter, I couldn’t go for a walk, I couldn’t eat or sleep, or barely breathe. I didn’t think I would ever live a normal life again.”

Jaime’s throat closed over again, and all he could do was nod. His eyes stung.

Selwyn rubbed his back again, just like Brienne had used to do to comfort him. “You will,” he said, his booming voice soft now. “You’ll feel better than you do now, Jaime. I promise.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

Selwyn laughed. “You will want to.”

“I won’t,” Jaime pouted. “Never.” He chugged more ale, soaking his beard in his drunken clumsiness.

“Well, you have to. I had to. I had Galladon … and Brienne, of course. They’d just lost their mother, I didn’t want them to lose me, as well.”

Jaime grunted. “That doesn’t –”

“Then Galladon died,” Selwyn said. His broad, jovial face drained of colour as he spoke. “We’d lost two daughters in the cradle between him and Brienne, just babes; Arianne a moon old and Alysanne less than a day. And then … Galladon drowned when he was eight, poor lad … I think _that_ was the hardest of all.”

“Gods,” said Tyrion. “And now Brienne. How are you still standing?”

“I drink a lot,” Selwyn said, with a grin. “I take my pleasures with beautiful women. And I do not stay alone if I can help it.”

“Alone … alone is _hard_ ,” Jaime said to his ale. “At night, I …”

Selwyn nodded, then beckoned to the barkeep to send out another round. “Talk to her,” he said. “That’s what I do. Even now, more than a score of years later, I still talk to Ella every night.”

“Do you?” Jaime asked. “Do you think she can hear you? Do you feel like she’s there sometimes, still there? Like she’s just stepped out of the room, or she’s just behind you, or …”

Selwyn squeezed his arm. “It was very sudden, Jaime. With Brienne. And she was very young.”

Jaime sighed. “I wrote her a letter.”

“Good. That’s good. It will help you to get it out.”

Jaime wasn’t sure it _had_. But he nodded. His goodfather was a veteran of grief, after all.

“Drink,” Selwyn told him. Handed him a new mug of ale. “As much as you need. It will make things easier.”

“No, it won’t,” Jaime said. “I miss her so much. So, so much.”

“Oh, that won’t change,” Selwyn told him. “But it will make it easier to show me my grandchild.”

**~ Brienne ~**

Lord Bronn of Highgarden sat in his solar, a large sunny room overlooking the gardens.

He had the remnants of a meal before him, though it was rather lavish for breakfast. Four different types of sausage, black pudding and white pudding, bacon, fried bread. Beans and eggs, too.

Brienne’s father would have been amused to see that. He always said that the first thing a common man raised to a Lordship did was get fat.

“If you’ve changed your mind about fucking Ser Prestan, you’re too late. I hear he’s been nose deep in one of the kitchen maids all week.”

Brienne grimaced.

“You don’t know what you missed out on – I told you his cock was big. I could hear her from the stables on the north wall!”

“No, thank you.”

Lord Bronn shook his head in despair. “I don’t get you.”

“That’s quite obvious.”

“What happened, did he break your cunt with that golden hand or something?”

Brienne closed her eyes. “Please. Must we do this every time we speak?”

Bronn sighed the sigh of a long-suffering man. “All right. What can I do for you? _Lord Commander_.”

“You’ve been clearing the keep, yes? Of the ... of the previous occupants’ things?”

Bronn screwed up his brow. “You mean...”

“Yes. The old Small Council. The old maester. The – the Lannisters’ things.”

He nodded. “Aye. Lord Tyrion wants his sister’s chambers, since the Tower of the Hand fell into the sea.”

“And … and his brother’s?”

“I think the Lord of the Onions is getting those.”

“Oh.” Brienne shifted her weight while he stared up at her. Shifted it again. “Did you find anything? Any … correspondence? Old correspondence that you might have –”

A big grin had crept back onto Bronn’s face now. “You worried he kept your smutty letters?”

“What?”

“Did you used to write to him about how much you missed that golden cock? Send him some of your smallclothes, freshly worn? And now you’re worried someone might find out you do like fucking after all?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I mean. I was there at Riverrun, I saw you coming out of his tent all flushed and flustered with your belt in your hands.”

“I was _not_ – I did _not!_ ”

“Yes you did.”

“I didn’t! Not – not _then_.” How had they ended up talking about sex again? “Look – it doesn’t matter. Did you or didn’t you find any correspondence? Specifically … something he might have written to me?”

“I didn’t.” He was still grinning. “To be straight with you, I haven’t even started on his chambers yet. It’s all still untouched if you want to go and have a poke around and get rid of anything incriminating.”

“Look, I didn’t –” She took a deep breath. “Right. Thank you.”

“Any time, Lord Commander. I’m nothing if not a man of discretion.”

“Of course you are.”

Brienne turned on her heel and left. Next, she went to visit Tyrion Lannister.

**~ Jaime ~**

“No,” Jaime said. “The babe’s asleep.”

The room span. No – it _pulsated_. Sounds rushed at him unexpectedly, simultaneously too loud yet also very far away. His head was a strange, swimming place full of liquid. Dull and dim and numb.

Selwyn was frowning. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because it’s sleep time! Definitely sleep time. The wet nurse … has a _rigorous_ schedule.”

“For a newborn?” Selwyn scoffed. “She’s got a rude awakening coming then.”

Jaime shrugged. Drank some more ale, even though he’d drunk enough to drown a man.

“He’s finding it hard …” Tyrion said softly.

Selwyn nodded. Opened his mouth to speak.

Jaime held up his golden hand. Somehow it had gotten itself twisted around backwards on his wrist. “I know. I know, you don’t have to say it! Brienne wouldn’t want this. She’d be _angry_ with me. She would want her beloved father to meet our child.”

Selwyn closed his mouth. Tilted his head.

“Well … fuck that! Brienne would want … she would want to _be here_. She’d want to introduce you, she’d want to see you hold him.”

“Well, yes … but …”

“I can’t!” Jaime said. He jabbed a finger, a flesh-and-blood one, at Selwyn’s face. “I won’t take that from her. I won’t have it when she can’t!”

He staggered to his feet, the stool he had been sitting on falling over behind him. The room span even worse, and he had to clutch at the tabletop to stay upright.

“Gods!” he heard himself slur. “I’m – I’m going to –“

He was dimly aware of the barkeep rushing at him with something. A bowl? A bucket? He didn’t have time to inspect it before he had his head inside it, and torrents of white puke were pouring out of his mouth.

So much of it! Even in his sorry state, Jaime marvelled at the volume and viscosity of his own vomit. It was truly quite impressive.

He felt big arms around him. Helping him towards the door. He heard Tyrion laughing. Placating the barkeep with a purse of coin.

There was blackness, warm and welcoming. Jaime embraced it.

**~ Brienne ~**

“I need to speak with you, my lord,” Brienne called after Tyrion as he made his way towards the main portcullis of the keep.

“You had best be quick, Ser,” he told her. “I have a ship to catch.”

Oh yes. Today was the day Lord Tyrion sailed for Braavos, to deal with the looming problem of his sister’s debt. As far as the Iron Bank were concerned, the throne was the throne; it mattered not who sat it. Lord Tyrion hoped the Lannisters’ debt-paying reputation would buy them a little time.

“Of course,” she said. “Though … my lord, it is a private matter.”

“Oh?” He stopped walking. She’d piqued his interest now – Lord Tyrion _always_ paid attention to the private affairs of others.

He moved to one side, away from his retinue.

Brienne followed, her hand gripped tight about Oathkeeper’s hilt. “Tis about your brother,” she said when she was sure they were out of earshot.

“What of him?”

Brienne took a breath. Chewed her lip. “May I ask where he is buried?”

“Oh,” Lord Tyrion swallowed. “He – he was not buried. Not yet, at least.”

Brienne’s heart leapt in her chest. “What do you mean?”

Tyrion sighed. “When I found them, I … well, it was after Daenerys … after the attack. Half the city still burned and everyone’s blood was up. I knew that if my brother and sister’s bodies were found by the Unsullied or the Dothraki or even the Northmen that they would probably be … well, desecrated.”

Brienne felt herself go pale. “Yes,” she whispered.

“I asked a friend, a good man and a Lannister bannerman, to take the bodies out of the city before that happened. To take them to Casterly Rock.”

“And … he did?”

Tyrion nodded. “They are Lions of the Rock, for all their crimes. It’s where they should be. I – I will arrange a burial the next time I am home. Probably in a few moons’ time.”

“Yes. Yes, I see.”

“Does that answer your question?”

It didn’t. Not truly – not the question Brienne was avoiding, not the one she _really_ needed the answer to. She realised she hadn’t spoken, and that Lord Tyrion was staring at her.

“Is there anything more?” he asked.

“He – he was dead, yes? Truly dead?”

Gods! What was she thinking? She’d blurted it, before she’d had a chance to stop herself. It sounded crass, insensitive. Discourteous.

But Tyrion’s face softened, and he tilted his head to one side. _Pity_ , she thought. She’d seen that look enough times to know. “You loved him.”

“That’s – that’s not why I’m asking.”

“He loved you too, you know.”

Brienne stiffened.

“Things were difficult – _Jaime_ was difficult. He and Cersei –”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she said. Her voice was like ice.

Tyrion nodded. Mercifully, he stopped talking. “To answer your question … half the floor above fell on them. Walls, archways … bricks. Lots of bricks.”

Brienne nodded.

“It was not … survivable.”

“You – you’re certain?”

“I could go into detail about his injuries if you’d like?”

“No – no. That won’t be necessary. Thank you, my – my Lord.”

She turned to leave, but Tyrion called her back.

“Ser Brienne? If you would like to accompany me when I go to Casterly Rock? Perhaps … perhaps to say a proper goodbye?”

“No!”

“Oh – of – of course. Well, good day.”

Brienne fled. Her cheeks burned, her heart pounded. For a moment, she thought she was going to be sick.

 _To say a proper goodbye_?

Was Lord Tyrion serious? Did he jest with her, poke fun at her? Did he wish to see her humiliated further?

Did he get some perverse pleasure out of the thought of Brienne sobbing over Jaime’s bones while he was laid to rest beside the woman who had killed him? What kind of monster was he?

She marched through the keep, everyone jumping to get out of her way. Probably she looked fearsome right now – flushed and furious. She stamped up the stairs in the White Sword Tower, slammed into her chambers. Yelled at Cayson and Cayle to get out of her way.

Both of them flattened against walls to let her past.

Brienne went into her bedchamber and slammed the door.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime woke with a start.

Someone had slammed a door – his door? He leapt upright in his bed with a cry.

His cry woke Selwyn – he was in bed beside Jaime. On Brienne’s side of the bed.

Brienne’s father let out a panicked expletive and leapt to his feet. He wasn’t wearing any breeches – they were hanging to dry on the back of a chair by the fire.

Jaime was fully dressed – boots and cloak and all, beneath the blankets.

They stared at each other as they woke up, neither of them looked sure how they had ended up here. Jaime had vague recollections of being carried over someone’s shoulder, and he was pretty sure that hadn’t been Tyrion …

“So … how fares my goodson?” Selwyn asked.

Jaime wasn’t sure. The room span. His head thumped. His mouth had the flavour of stale puke. “Like half a corpse,” he managed, before remembering what poor taste such a jest was right now.

Selwyn didn’t seem to mind. “That sounds like a good morning’s work,” he grinned. “Well, besides the part where you vomited on my breeches, of course. I could have done without that.”

“My apologies,” Jaime said, though he had no recollection of that. He staggered from the bed to pour himself a cup of water. Drank it deeply and filled it again. Outside the sun sat high over the rooftops of King’s Landing. It must be noon, or thereabouts.

Jaime had become no stranger to the afternoon hangover of late, but this was the first time he had shared it with someone else. It was less … lonely, perhaps?

Just then, the babe wailed in the next room. Jaime started towards the door; his eyes met Selwyn’s. He froze.

Selwyn looked … overcome. It was just the sound of a baby crying, but it had clearly overwhelmed the older man. His eyes were huge and wet and very, very blue in the sunshine. His mouth moved, though he spoke no words; happiness and sadness warred on his features.

He looked at Jaime. Looked away.

It hit Jaime, then. That babe was Selwyn’s only living relative. Brienne’s babe, a part of her, as surely as she had been a part of Selwyn. It was all he had left of his whole family.

Jaime swallowed. Looked at the floor. “Would you … would you like to meet him, then?” His voice was so soft it was little more than a whisper.

“Him?” Selwyn asked. He did not look as though he could speak further.

“Yes. A boy. She gave me a son.”

Jaime led Selwyn from the bedchamber and a little down the hall. Here was the chamber they had prepared as a nursery once they had found that Brienne was with child. Here the babe had been since he had come into this world, taking his mother’s life as he did.

Jaime pushed open the door with nerveless fingers.

Inside, sunlight streamed across the polished wooden floor, onto the bright white crib and blankets.

The plump little wet nurse was just picking the child from his crib. She looked up in surprise to see Jaime and Selwyn.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “My Lord!”

Jaime froze. He could see the babe’s little head, untucked from the blanket—tiny strands of pale hair atop it. He could see a hand, four little fingers and a thumb. He could see wriggling feet.

Selwyn pushed past Jaime’s petrified form. Strode to the wet nurse, to the babe. Jaime envied his capability.

“Lord Selwyn Tarth,” he introduced himself to the wet nurse. He was softly spoken, now. Almost reverent.

The wet nurse curtsied. “Most pleased to meet you, milord.”

“Thank you for taking care of my grandson most ably. May I ask your name?”

“Bancey, milord.”

“Bancey. May I … may I hold him?”

Bancey blinked in surprise. Probably she had never been asked that by someone so far above her in station. Or probably she thought Jaime cold and uncaring and was surprised to see that Lord Tarth cared for his grandson at all. “Of – of course, milord.”

Selwyn bent a little to pick the babe from the diminutive woman’s arms. He cradled him, wrapped him tighter in the blanket. Stroked his little cheek with a broad finger.

He turned to Jaime, a huge grin on his face and tears pouring down his cheeks at the same time.

“What’s his name?” Selwyn asked Jaime.

Jaime fled.

Out of the nursery, into the hallway. Past the privy, past the library. Past the door to the dining room, his eyes full of tears. His head pounding.

He ran smack into someone, running in the opposite direction. Someone big. Someone dressed in plate.

For a heartbeat, through his tears, he saw her.

Her … _her_.

“Br – Brienne?” he stammered, but she was gone.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne ran smack into Jaime.

It was _him_. She had been striding from her bedchamber towards the solar, intending to read the letter again, determined to understand _when_ or _what_ or _how_. Instead, she had collided with a ghost.

The hallway had been empty. Just motes of dust spinning in the spring sunshine and then suddenly, Jaime was there. Running at her.

She hadn’t been able to stop. He slammed into her, hard enough to stagger them both. He looked at her. She looked at him. And then … he was gone. Just gone. Vanishing into the sunshine right before her eyes.

Gods …

Gods, she had lost her wits! She was imagining Jaime now. Not only his scent and his weight in her bed, not only the feel of him beside her, but … _seeing_ him. Actually seeing him.

She turned around, once, and then again. Wondering if he would reappear. She could still feel the impact of him in her bones, the soreness of her chin where he had struck her with his head.

Ghosts couldn’t hurt you. Figments of your imagination couldn’t hurt you. But her chin … it would bruise, later, she knew. And on her breastplate, there was a handprint. A left hand. He had been as solid and as real as she was.

She went to her solar and poured herself a glass of wine with shaking hands. Drank it down in two gulps. Poured another.

She sat down. Rubbed her sore chin. The scent of him was on her, the scent of Jaime, unmistakeable. All over her, all around her, too, like he was in the room. She pulled the letter out of her drawer.

She read through it, again. Again.

Still not understanding much of it, but knowing it was him.

Then, she pulled out a piece of parchment. Dipped her quill in her inkwell.

_Jaime_

she wrote.

_It’s me, Brienne._

_Are you there?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH for all the wonderful comments on the last chapter, so pleased that this idea has piqued so many people's interest!
> 
> I'll be taking a little break next week to finish my gift fic for the Festive Exchange, but this will be back the week after. 
> 
> If you'd like to get updates and teasers in the interim, please come follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/). I love to chat so come and say hello!


	3. My Protector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They collided. Now what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **~ Jaime ~**

Jaime did not go into his solar that day.

Jaime went back to bed. Bed was comfortable, bed was warm. He could draw the curtains to smother the daylight, to stop the outside world from coming in. In bed, he could be by himself, be as miserable as he wanted.

He could cling to the mattress, sobbing until he thought his body would break. He could bury himself in blankets, in the comforting smell of his own sweat. Use pillows to stop up his ears until the sounds of his goodfather went away.

Selwyn was still here.

Jaime could hear his booming voice, talking to the servants, talking to that damnable wet nurse. Making her laugh, making her giggle. Filling Jaime’s ears with the sounds of mirth when all there should be was misery.

Jaime rolled over. He fell asleep.

At some point in the night, Brienne got into bed beside him. It was dark outside, and darker still in the bedchamber – his fire was unlit and not even the stump of a candle burned.

He could see nothing, but she was _there_.

Close enough that he could almost hear her breathe. The tug of the sheets across his body as she settled in beside him. Almost. Almost.

He reached for her – he had felt her before, had he not? Collided with her in the hallway, her plate armour solid, cold metal under his palm. But now, when his hand caressed the space where she would be, there was nought but an empty pillow. Empty sheets.

He was going mad, of course.

It was not surprising. No man’s mind could withstand losing a woman such as her.

Jaime didn’t care. If madness was the place he could see Brienne, where he could collide with her in a corridor and still sleep beside her shade, then madness he wanted.

He pulled her pillow towards him and embraced it.

**~ Brienne ~**

When Brienne woke up, her pillow was gone.

It was Jaime. She knew it was. She had felt him again last night as she had climbed into bed, and he had felt how he had always felt in bed beside her at Winterfell – restless and sleepless and troubled. She had thought he reached for her at one point – she’d almost felt his hand on her face, but … it was only almost.

He was alive.

Somehow, Jaime had lived. It was the only explanation.

Brienne sat up in bed – beside her, the remaining pillow bore the indentation of another head. The bed smelled like Jaime – like his breath, like his sweat, like his sleep. Four-and-thirty mornings she had woken to that smell in Winterfell. She knew it. She did.

He was alive.

She got out of her bed. Splashed her face, washed under her arms. Wet her hair and brushed it back. In the looking glass, her cheeks were livid with colour, and her pupils were huge.

So … had Lord Tyrion lied to her, or did he not know his brother was alive? Had he seen what he believed to be his brother’s corpse and sent it back to Casterly Rock with his bannerman unwittingly?

Brienne knew not. The Imp was a practised liar, and one who could be vicious when he had a mind to be. He was not someone she could trust to tell the truth.

But ... Jaime lived. He lived in the walls, perhaps – were there not passages all over the keep, hidden and forgotten?

Jaime had been resident in this tower for most of his adult life; it made sense that he would know its secrets well. Perhaps he had thought he had a better chance of being undetected here than at Casterly Rock. Perhaps he had thought if he were discovered, then he could throw himself on Brienne’s mercy. That he could rely on her not to turn him in?

It sounded like madness, she had to admit.

And much of the theory did not fit. If Jaime had lived in the walls since the fall of King’s Landing, why was it only recently she had become aware of him? And … she could understand him emerging to forage for food and water, but … to write her a letter? To risk sleeping beside her in bed?

Why would Jaime do such things?

She dressed slowly, skittishly, uncomfortably aware that there might be a presence in the walls who could see her. Trying not to think about all the times she had scratched her arse in this room, or picked her nose, or changed her moonblood-stained smallclothes. Gods … how many times had she masturbated? How many times while thinking of _him_?

She walked around the room, trying to see how he might have got in. Knocking on bricks and panels to see if any sounded hollow. All she could hear were her squires in the other rooms, preparing her breakfast. Outside, the bells of the city tolled twice for morning watch.

Everyone was starting their day.

Guards would be waking, breaking their fast, donning their armour. Servants would be busy, running from the kitchens to the dining chambers of the keep. Nursemaids would be taking care of babes, merchants preparing their wares.

All over the city, all over Westeros. Actual people, doing actual things.

She sighed. Stopped her search. Of course Jaime was not alive.

It was ridiculous. She must be hysterical, to have entertained such a thing. Jaime was dead, smashed to pieces with his sister beneath the cellars of the Red Keep; he had not been in Brienne’s bed last night, had not touched her, had not collided with her in the corridor yesterday. The most likely explanation was that she had gone a little mad with grief.

Brienne did not like to believe that, but there it was. A moon at rutting was enough to divorce a woman from her wits, it seemed.

She went for her breastplate, though, and there it was.

Jaime’s handprint. Right on the polished gold. Still there, despite Cayson and Cayle supposedly having cleaned her armour.

It _was_ there. Truly, it was. She could not excuse that as madness.

She threw open the door. Called for her squires. One of them dropped something with a clatter in the dining room. They came running but hesitated at the door of her bedchamber.

“What is this?” she asked.

They tentatively tiptoed over the threshold, their desire not to be chastised stronger than their terror at entering a lady’s bedchamber. Brienne pointed at her armour.

“Your – your breastplate, Ser?” ventured Cayle.

“Did you clean it?”

“Cayson did,” said Cayle.

“Cayle did,” said Cayson, at the same time.

Brienne sighed. “What is _this_?” she asked again. Pointing very specifically at the handprint.

“Your – your breastplate?” stammered Cayson.

“This. _On_ my breastplate.” She needed them to see it. She needed them to _say_ it.

“Um … dirt?” asked Cayle.

“A smudge,” said Cayson, more confidently.

“No … no … _this_?” Brienne traced the outline with her fingertip.

“Is it … food?”

“Food?!”

“You know, you might have – when you were eating …”

“I did _not!_ ”

“Oh. No – no, Ser, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –”

“What does it look like?”

“We’ll clean it, Ser,” said Cayle. “We will.”

“No. No! I mean … what does it look like?”

Cayson and Cayle looked at each other. Back at Brienne. Back to each other.

“It – it looks like a handprint, yes?” Brienne demanded.

“Erm … maybe?” said Cayson.

“It’s not us, Ser!” said Cayle. “I would never touch you, Ser! Not there. Not on your – not _there_!”

Brienne despaired. The handprint wasn’t even close to her breast. And even if it was … it was armour. Attempting to grope a woman through steel plate would be one of the most fruitless exercises known to man.

“All right,” she sighed. “Never mind. Let’s just … I’ll just eat my breakfast.”

“Of course, Ser.”

She led them out of her bedchamber and into the dining room.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime sat down at the breakfast table.

He was undressed – in a red silken robe over his smallclothes, his long hair loose and still just as tangled.

“Where’s the wine?” he asked his goodfather.

“You don’t need wine,” Selwyn Tarth answered with an amused shake of his head. “Not with breakfast.”

Jaime scoffed. Clicked his fingers at the meek and mousy serving girl. “Wine!” he called.

She brought him wine. Jaime drank it. “Have you been here all night?” he asked.

Selwyn nodded. “I’ve been getting to know my grandson.” He looked up then, with a smile. Beckoned.

Jaime twisted in his seat to see Bancey tentatively stepping over the threshold, a bundle in a white blanket in her arms.

“He’s – he’s fed, milord,” she said. She smiled at Selwyn too.

“Excellent!” boomed Selwyn. “Bring him here.”

Jaime gaped. “No!” he managed to cry from his frozen throat. “I don’t want him here –”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Selwyn said, taking the babe from Bancey’s arms. “You’re his father.”

“I – I can’t!”

“Yes, you can.” Selwyn’s voice was gentle, but it brooked no argument. “You must.”

The serving girl put Jaime’s breakfast in front of him – diced bacon and scrambled eggs. Things he did not have to cut. Tyrion arrived, then, looking somewhat harried. He took his usual seat beside Jaime and beckoned for wine too. He did a double-take at Selwyn, holding the babe.

“Is – is that –?”

“Good morning, Lord Tyrion,” Selwyn said with a smile.

“Is that … my nephew?”

“Indeed it is. Have you not met him?”

Tyrion shook his head. He looked to Jaime, but only briefly. Curse the Imp’s inquisitive nature. He slid from his chair and crept around the table to where Selwyn sat, the babe nestled against his big chest. Tyrion slowly reached out a hand. Touched the babe’s face. Jaime looked away.

“Oh,” he sighed. “He’s _beautiful_. Jaime –”

“No!” Jaime cried. “I won’t. I can’t! Tyrion, please.”

“But … he has her eyes. Her beautiful eyes.”

Jaime thought he was going to be sick. He pushed his plate away and dashed for the nearest door, which was, unfortunately, the solar. No way out of there, lest it was out the window and down the tower wall in his smallclothes.

“Jaime!” called Tyrion from outside the door.

“No!” he shouted back. He had his back pressed to the door, in case his burly goodfather decided to try and shoulder it down. But gods – Selwyn was _huge_! He could knock Jaime aside like a twig if he had a mind to bring the door down.

Wildly, madly, Jaime dashed across the solar. Squeezed himself behind the desk and shoved it across the floor, paying no heed to the rug he was rucking, or the horrible squeal the legs made against the flagstones beneath. He rammed it against the door and pressed his weight against it too.

He heard his brother sigh. “Jaime. Please …”

“S – stop!” Of course, the tears were starting now, hot and stinging.

“Will you be taking breakfast in there?” called Selwyn.

“No,” Jaime sobbed. He didnt want food. He just wanted Brienne.

“All right,” said Tyrion. “Just – take all the time you need, yes?”

Jaime didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was bent double over the desk, tangled in the red silk robe, sobbing so hard he thought his ribs would break.

He heard the babe start to cry too. Heard Selwyn shush him, heard him pace as he rocked him. He heard Tyrion cooing too, in a ridiculous falsetto.

He hated them both then – a blind, impotent rage that seared through his entire body. How dare they bond with the babe, how dare they take joy in what Brienne could not?

He sagged against the desk, all the life going out of his muscles. Tried to sit in the chair before realising it was still on the other side of the room. He landed in a sorry heap on his arse; he hit his head on the desk.

A piece of parchment floated down from the desktop. Landed on Jaime’s lap.

It was all but blank. Just three lines, written at the top in black ink. In a neat, measured hand. A hand he recognised.

_Jaime,_

it said.

_It’s me, Brienne._

_Are you there?_

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne put her armour on. Cayson tightened the buckles under her pauldrons, Cayle fitted her cloak to her back.

Brienne watched herself in the mirror; she looked pale, but the armour looked good on her. It was quite beautiful, the burnished gold, the three-eyed raven—the accents of black and the resplendent white cloak. The handprint was gone from her breastplate – one of them had polished it away.

Cayson brought her swordbelt; Brienne lifted her arms so that he might wrap it about her waist. She sheathed Oathkeeper herself and kept a hand on its hilt.

“I will return for the midday meal,” she told her squires once she was ready to leave. “The King will be meeting with several dignitaries from the Summer Isles this morning, followed by a short reception in the ballroom. I will be taking a watch at the king’s bedchamber tonight, so I will need to rest this afternoon.”

“Very good, Ser,” Cayson said.

“You should make use of your time to clean those training swords,” she told them as she strode through the hallway. “I have two pairs of boots that have yet to be polished, as well.”

“Yes, Ser.”

She went into the reception room, adjusting one of her pauldrons as she walked.

“My other cape needs mending, and ... my horse. She moved to the upper stables today, make sure she’s happy. Take her ... take her something nice. An apple, or –”

“Of course, Ser.”

Brienne opened the door to leave, terrifying a young page who stood there, one hand raised, about to knock.

He looked up at Brienne ... and up. Seemingly frozen to the spot.

“Yes?” she asked, after a moment of silence had passed.

“A m-message. My-milady.” He held out a scroll in a trembling hand.

Brienne took it, noticing that it bore the king’s seal. She broke it, unrolled the parchment.

 _Ser Brienne_ ,

it read.

_It turns out that your services will not be required this morning as I meet with our friends from the Summer Isles. Please continue to catch up with your correspondence._

_I thank you for your diligence to your duties,_

_Bran I Stark_

“Oh,” she said. Swallowed. Rerolled the scroll. “It – it seems as though my responsibilities this morning have changed.”

Cayson looked to Cayle. Cayle returned the look.

Brienne pursed her lips. “Yours, however,” she said to her squires, “have _not_.”

“N-no, Ser,” said Cayle. “Of course not.”

They scurried off, each in a different direction. Brienne sighed – they were like headless chickens whenever she gave them tasks.

She stood alone in her chambers’ reception room, listening to the two of them run from room to room. Holding the king’s scroll in her right hand. Her left around Oathkeeper’s hilt.

_Please continue to catch up with your correspondence._

That … it was …

Well, it was most bizarre, there was no other way around it. A little hurtful, too. Concerning.

Brienne chewed her lip – this was not the first time the king had dismissed her from her duties when it was clearly her place to be by his side. That was worrying.

Was he displeased with her? Had she embarrassed him in some way? She did not believe so. Brienne did what all the best guards did – stayed close, observed situations from a distance, kept her mouth closed. Lady Sansa had never once complained.

Of course, the possibility remained that the king did not want her at his side because she was a woman. Brienne knew little and less of the Summer Isles’ culture, but perhaps the delegation would take offence at a female guard’s presence? Maybe it would make the king an object of derision to have his life protected by someone with a cunt?

Surely though, someone would have raised this before now, as they planned the events?

Brienne sighed. It stung, but … she was a Kingsguard. Those were the king’s orders.

_Catch up with your correspondence._

She scoffed to herself; she didn’t even have that much. Nonetheless, she headed to her solar.

She opened the door; it rebounded into her face with a bump. She cried out and swore a most unladylike oath, which had her squires come running.

“What is this?” she asked them, dabbing the blood from her lip where her own teeth had cut her.

“What, Ser?” asked Cayle.

“This! Look!” She opened the door again, carefully this time. It opened less than an inch before it banged into something. “My desk. It – it’s been pushed against the door.”

They both looked as perplexed as she felt. “Not – not us, Ser,” Cayson insisted. “I – we … we haven’t even been in your solar today.”

“Well, it’s not _me_!”

“We couldn’t have, Ser. How could we have got out if we’d done that?”

Cayson had a point. That desk was old, solid and heavy. A slight boy of five-and-ten like him or Cayle could not have pulled it, one-handed, against the door through a gap so small. It had to have been pushed – from the other side.

_Jaime!_

her mind blared, straight away. Brienne pushed that thought away, hard.

Eventually, she managed to shove her way into the solar, pressing her weight against the door and slowly wiggling the desk as much as she could with her hands through the gap.

It was warm inside; to her surprise, there was a fire lit within.

Cayson and Cayle looked dumbfounded, and for once, Brienne didn’t blame them. It was quite obvious that neither of them had laid the fire – whoever it had been had cleaned the grate out first. Properly, too.

Brienne pushed her desk back to its proper position. Straightened the rug.

Then, she noticed a piece of parchment on the floor, partially obscured by the rug. She pulled it out. Looked at it and all but leapt from her skin. Gods!

“That – that will be all,” she stammered, her blood afire and her skin shivering, all at once.

“Ser?” asked Cayle as he righted her chair.

“You heard me!” she snapped. “You have duties to attend to, do you not?”

The two boys fled.

Brienne closed the door behind them, her face burning, her hands trembling. She walked, at a slow and measured pace, around her desk. Sat down in her chair.

She put the piece of parchment on the desk. Pressed it flat with both her palms. Wiped the sweat from her upper lip.

It was the piece of parchment she had written on yesterday. After she had … after she _thought_ she had collided with Jaime in the hallway.

It had been a foolish thing to do – so foolish. So … gods! If anyone had seen it! She could not bear to think of the derision.

But nonetheless, she had done it. Her writing was at the top of the page still.

_Jaime_

it read.

_It’s me, Brienne._

_Are you there?_

Only now, there was something else, as well. Another line, written beneath hers. Written in black ink, with slanting, untidy letters, slightly smudged by an unpractised hand.

_I’m here, Brienne. Always._

She gasped. The gasp sounded a little like a sob. Her head spun.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime was still on the floor. A useless heap of limbs and tangled curls, his red silk robe falling off one shoulder, twisted about his waist. His body was too heavy to move. He felt like a broken man, like a man who would never stir again.

He still had the quill in his hand. Ink stained his fingertips. Dripped on the rug where he lay. He didn’t care. He didn’t have the strength to put it down.

The world seemed like a distant thing, an abstract thing. A thing Jaime was too broken for. Through the window, he heard the sept bells toll, he heard the wind blow. The call of traders and the laughter of a child.

There was music, somewhere. The sound of footsteps. The scent of Brienne.

He closed his eyes.

Brienne …

Brienne …

Her shade was here with him, he could feel her. So close, he could almost hear her breathing.

Did ghosts breathe? It seemed a strange thing to do if so.

But how many times had he lain with his head on Brienne’s chest? How many times had they sat together in the quiet of their chambers, working or reading or just _being_? He knew the sound of her breathing. It was as familiar to him as his own.

She was breathing quickly. She sounded … excited?

He opened his eyes. Blinked. Blinked again.

Pulled himself up on the stone floor, sitting bolt upright. He blinked again.

On the parchment, right below where he had written

_I’m here Brienne. Always._

there was more.

_Are you well? Do you need help?_

Brienne’s writing. Again. So recent the ink was still wet.

Jaime burst into a bout of fresh tears. It was true. It really was. Only Brienne, only his brave, brilliant, gentle Brienne would be asking if he needed help when she was the one who was dead.

Jaime went to write again, forgetting that the ink on his quill was blobby and half-dried. He dipped it frantically in the inkwell and wrote again.

_I love you_

he wrote. Then

_I miss you_

underneath.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne got up from her chair. She needed to take her armour off, the gorget was choking her. Sweat slid down her ribs from under her arms.

And … and it might give Jaime a chance to come out from his hiding place and write to her again. It was a slim chance, but …

She propped her quill on the inkwell as she got to her feet. Slid the parchment across the top of her desk.

She jumped. Gods!

Gods … there, beneath her message … there was _more_! More … Jaime’s writing. More from Jaime.

_I love you_

it said.

 _I miss you_.

How? How had he done that? The parchment had never left her hand!

She stood, frozen, staring at it—half expecting something else to appear as well. Nothing did.

More sweat pouring down her sides, her skin in goosebumps all over, she picked up her quill again.

**~ Jaime ~**

_I love you_

_I miss you_

His quill still sat on the last letter.

Beneath his hand, Brienne wrote again.

_How are you doing this?_

Jaime smiled through his pouring tears. Of course she would ask that! Of course she would want to know the hows and the whys.

_I know not_

he answered. Then he wrote

_Because I love you. I think our love is stronger than death._

**~ Brienne ~**

_I know not._

All around her, she felt Jaime. He was here … he was _here_. He filled her senses, and it was like she was back in Winterfell again, during those four-and-thirty days she had been able to believe that she loved him, that she was loved _by_ him.

He had consumed her chambers as much as he had consumed her. His clothes on the floor, his sword against the wall. His beard clippings in her washbowl and his boots drying by the fire. The dent of his head on the other pillow, the stain of his seed on her sheets. Every time she had come home, she had opened the door to the smell of him, to the smell of _being with him_.

Jaime was _here_. Brienne just couldn’t see him.

_Because I love you._

he wrote then.

 _I think our love is stronger than death_.

The letters formed right before her eyes, slowly, patiently, one at a time. The letters, and an ink smudge, where the fingers of Jaime’s left hand would chafe the parchment as he wrote. She could almost hear him curse.

Brienne dipped her quill. She swallowed.

_Are you dead, Jaime?_

_Is that what this is?_

**~ Jaime ~**

Brienne’s letters appeared on the parchment faster this time, and not so neatly. They were a little shaky, a little scratchy, as if her hand trembled as she wrote them.

_Are you dead, Jaime?_

_Is that what this is?_

All the air left Jaime’s body in a rush. He reread the lines, and again. She didn’t know? She didn’t understand what had happened to her?

Every instinct he had screamed to comfort her, lie to her and protect her but … this was _Brienne_. She would want the truth. She was strong enough to face it, even in death. She deserved no less.

_Brienne_

he wrote, wondering if he should use some term of endearment but deciding against it. She would want him to be practical. Honest. She would appreciate directness.

_You are the one who has gone to the Stranger’s arms. I am in this world without you now, and it is unbearable._

He stopped; he could write no more. His whole body shook, and again, he started to cry.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne watched in horror as Jaime’s words formed on the parchment in front of her.

_You are the one who has gone to the Stranger’s arms. I am in this world without you now, and it is unbearable._

She stared, not understanding. Suddenly, a drop of water landed on the parchment from nowhere, splashing into the still-wet ink and making it run.

Brienne reached out a finger. Dipped it into the droplet. She put her finger to the tip of her tongue – it was salty. Bitter.

A teardrop. Jaime was crying. Jaime was crying because he thought she was dead.

_Jaime,_

she wrote back.

_I have not died. I am very much alive. I am here, in King’s Landing, I am Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. It is you who is believed dead, perished seven moons ago beneath the Red Keep, the day the dragon came._

She stopped; she could write no more. Could not bear to think about how, or with _whom,_ Jaime had died. Could not speak of it, even to him.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime did not understand.

_You believe me dead?_

he asked.

_Seven moons ago, we were together, here in King’s Landing. That would have been the moon that we confirmed our babe grew within you. Do you not recall this?_

**~ Brienne ~**

_A babe?_

**~ Jaime ~**

_Our son. He is the reason that the Stranger took you from me, my Brienne. My protector, my love, my lady wife. You died in my arms after bringing our son into this world._

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne cried out.

She shoved it away from her, parchment, ink and quill, shoved it clear across the desk, so hard it all spilt onto the floor the other side. She got to her feet and ran for the door.

She barely made it to the privy before she brought her breakfast up – porridge, eggs, bacon, tea as well. Puked until there was nothing left. She stood up and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She couldn’t stop shaking.

“Ser?” asked a voice from behind her.

She turned to see Cayle, his eyes wide.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“No!” she cried, a little too aggressively.

Cayle jumped back, out of the doorway.

“I am … unwell,” she clarified, more gently this time.

“Yes … Ser.”

“Might I have some water?”

Cayle nodded.

“I think perhaps I should go to bed.”

Cayle nodded again.

**~ Jaime ~**

She did not write back.

She was gone.

He could not feel her anymore, could not sense her breath, and could not feel her warmth in the room.

He looked at the parchment, at her writing, half of him expecting it to have vanished too. It had not. It was real; it had really happened.

Jaime got to his feet. Tied his robe about himself. Slowly pulled the desk away from the door and straightened the rug.

In the dining room, Tyrion and Selwyn had gone, and only the servants remained, clearing away the remains of breakfast. The two girls, who would probably have been of an age with Myrcella, looked at him with fearful, worried eyes.

He must look quite the state.

Jaime tried to smile, to put them at ease. “I think … I think I need a bath,” he told them. “If you could …?”

“Yes, milord,” said the taller of the two, the redhead.

“There is no hurry.” He tried to smile again. “When you have finished will be fine.”

He crept through the hallway towards his bedchamber, wondering if he would see Brienne again, if he would just get a sense of her somewhere. Somehow. He still clutched the piece of parchment in his hand.

Tyrion came towards him, heading from the babe’s nursery, he noticed.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked Jaime.

Jaime nodded vaguely. Was he feeling better? He wasn’t crying, at least.

“Good,” Tyrion said. He fell silent, but made no effort to move, even though it was probably past time he attended his duties.

“What is it?” Jaime asked after a moment of awkward silence. “I was about to take a bath.”

“This may not be the right thing to do,” Tyrion said with a sigh. “But I don’t know what the right thing to do _is_.”

“What do you want?”

“To speak with you.”

“About what?”

“Come …”

Tyrion moved past Jaime and opened the door to the bedchamber. Jaime followed him inside, where it was still dark, the bed unmade. Jaime frowned – somehow there was an extra pillow?

Tyrion dithered some more. Sat on the bed and then stood up again. Smoothed his breeches, adjusted his rings.

“What is it?” Jaime pressed. “What do you want to say?”

Tyrion huffed. Looked away. “I want to talk to you about Father.”

“Father?” Jaime blinked. It had been near half a decade since Tywin Lannister had died at Tyrion’s hand. It had been almost as long since Jaime had spared him a serious thought.

“Yes. Father and … and me.”

“Get to it, then.”

“It – it can’t have escaped your attention. Surely, Jaime.”

“What?”

“That your … situation. It’s not unlike Father. And – and mother. And … me.”

“In what way?”

Tyrion sighed. “A mother who dies on the birthing bed? A child … _blamed_. A child unloved.”

Jaime gasped. “You – you think –?”

“I don’t think anything.”

“No. You do. You think I don’t love my son? That I blame him?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, but… you … you can’t even stand to be in the same room as him, Jaime. You would sooner run away. Barricade yourself in your solar. Literally barricade!”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do. I understand that your heart is broken. That you don’t know how to live your life without Brienne. But … tell me honestly. Have you ever even held your son?”

“I am a Lord, am I not? Lords don’t –”

Tyrion pulled a face.

Jaime sighed. “It’s not that. I swear on Brienne’s bones that it is not that I blame the babe for her death. I truly, truly don’t.”

“Have you even looked at him?”

“How could I? How could I, Tyrion? He doesn’t want _me_ , what good am I to him? He cries for his mother, the mother who never held him, the mother who died before she even saw him.”

“Jaime …”

“Do you think I can ever hope to be enough for him? His mother was _Brienne_! The best … the most _good_ , the strongest, the most honourable woman who ever walked Westerosi soil. And – and now she’s dead and all that poor babe has is – is _me_.”

The tears came again. Of course they did. Jaime couldn’t bear the thought of it, that he … useless, worthless, poisonous Lannister that he was, should be the one to raise Brienne’s child.

He was on his knees then, with Tyrion’s arms around him, sobbing desperately into the shoulder of his brother’s jerkin.

“You are a good father,” Tyrion told him, stroking a soft hand over Jaime’s matted curls. “I know you can be.”

“How?” Jaime cried. “I was never a father to – to my other – to Joffrey, or Tommen, or …”

“You were a father to _me_ ,” Tyrion told him. He brushed Jaime’s hair back and tucked it behind one of his ears. “The closest thing I had. We wronged each other many times, tis true, but … the good we did each other … that will never change.”

Jaime clung to his brother and sobbed even harder.

“Get some rest,” Tyrion said when the tears finally subsided. “Take your bath. I will return for the evening meal.”

Jaime nodded, swallowing his sobs. Using the heel of his hand to wipe away his tears. Gods, his eyes were sore.

Tyrion kissed his forehead, and left.

Jaime sat on the bed, realising that he had dropped the parchment to the sheets somewhere in there. He picked it up, grateful that Tyrion had not noticed it. He read through it again, just to be sure he had not imagined it.

He had not.

He had spoken to _Brienne_.

Slowly, Jaime got to his feet. Went to the armoire by the window, the one he had not touched in a moon. All of Brienne’s things were inside.

He opened it now, and it was easier than he thought it would be—just his hand on the handle, a quick pull towards him. A physical action.

Inside, Brienne’s clothes still hung. Her armour was in a chest below. Jaime tried not to look too hard – he didn’t want to see anything too specific. He wasn’t sure how he would cope if he saw the fur-lined cape she had worn in the North. The blue tunic she had worn the first time they lay together. Her wedding dress ….

There were some drawers at the bottom where she had kept more personal items. Some jewellery, a hair comb, the ribbon the Septon had bound their wrists with when they wed. And … there it was.

The dagger.

He picked it up carefully, though it was not like to break.

It was a beautiful thing, a decadent thing. A little ridiculous really, but when he’d commissioned it, he and Brienne had just emerged from endless days of war, endless days of night. He had wanted something golden and sparkling and extravagant to mark their betrothal.

She had worn it on her belt every day since then. Every day until she died.

“Brienne?” he whispered to the empty room. “Do you remember this?”

She was here again, he could feel her, though perhaps not so immediately as he had in the solar. She was in bed. She was asleep.

Jaime closed the armoire with his foot. Took the dagger to the bed.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne woke up.

It was later – much later, almost evening. Almost time to guard the king’s bedchamber. She had slept so much.

But she had not been sick again. Her stomach felt better; it was far more settled. Through the window, the muted light of evening spread across the city rooftops. Somewhere in the keep, there was music. The Summer Islanders’ reception was still going on.

Brienne stretched on the pillows. Turned over.

The other pillow was back, she noticed. And … there was something on it.

Something golden, something that sparkled, something that caught the evening light.

She sat up. It was a dagger.

She picked it up, felt the weight of it. It was Jaime – she knew that before she had even laid a single finger on it. It was unmistakeably what the Hound had once called “Lannister Gold”. Gaudy. Excessive. Solid gold and dripping with jewels.

The shape of it, too. The hilt was a smaller version of Oathkeeper’s, except the lion’s mane, flowing round the haft, was decorated with crescent moons and starbursts, studded with sapphires. The lion had emeralds for eyes though, instead of the rubies that were inlaid in Oathkeeper.

Brienne swallowed. She was not blind to the symbolism. Lannister gold, but the Sapphire Isle, as well. The two of them.

It took her a few breaths before she could contend with that. The thought of the two of them … Jaime and Brienne … _together_. Together enough that Jaime would have made something such as this. For her. As counterpart to the sword he had given her too.

_My protector, my love, my lady wife._

She did not understand.

She did not. Could not …

_You died in my arms after bringing our son into this world._

She shoved the dagger under her pillow and closed her eyes.

**~ Jaime ~**

It was evening. Candlelight. Firelight.

Somewhere in the keep, someone played music.

It drifted on the air, gentle and beautiful. As soft as Brienne’s full lips, sleep-slack and kissing in the dead of night. As warm as her supple freckled skin above him. A harp, he heard. A flute. A lute, as well. Was the king holding a ball, perhaps? A reception?

Jaime was bathed, his hair untangled. His golden curls still drying down his back. His beard was neater, too; he’d trimmed it a little as he sat at his dressing table. Just the sides, just the bits that had grown wild and straggly.

He still looked half a corpse, thin-cheeked with his eyes still red and raw, but he was clean. He smelled of hair oil and perfume. He was dressed in silk and leather.

The parchment he and Brienne had written on was tucked into his belt. The betrothal dagger had disappeared from the bed. She had it now, wherever she was.

Jaime primped his hair and got up from the dressing table.

In the hallway, all was quiet. Just the music, just his footsteps on the flagstones. Just his breath in the stillness of his chambers. He could not feel Brienne.

He stopped outside the nursery door.

He could hear soft noises from within. Movement. Breathing. The babe must be awake.

Jaime put his hand on the doorknob, but it took several minutes before he could bring himself to turn it.

Inside, the room was dark, the velvet curtains drawn across the windows.

The beautiful white crib sat in the middle of the room. Jaime could see the swaddled bundle within. Turned on his side. His eyes tightly shut. Fast asleep.

Jaime didn’t understand.

Then, he realised. The noises weren’t coming from the babe. He pushed the door open a little more so that the splash of light from the hallway illuminated more of the nursery.

Over on the chaise, two bodies writhed and rocked in unison. Dumpy little Bancey the wet nurse had her frock unlaced, her enormous teats freed and in a pair of grasping hands. Her skirts were pushed up too, her legs wrapped around her partner’s thrusting arse. She gasped and squeaked and hummed in delight.

Jaime stared. He couldn’t move. He should shout, scream. Dismiss her from his service for bringing a lover into the tower. Probably have her flogged as well. But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop watching.

The man’s head was dropped into Bancey’s neck, placing kisses on her jaw. He was big … and dressed well, Jaime noticed, seeing the fine quality of the boots abandoned by the chaise. The soft leather of the breeches bunched about his knees.

He was groaning too, but softly, enthusiastically, little pleased noises, little grunts. His noises … they reminded Jaime of Brienne, of making love with Brienne, which was odd. Disturbingly odd.

The realisation hit him in a slap of cold horror. Just as the man lifted his head and shifted to bring one of Bancey’s sweet plump nipples to his lips.

By all the gods, by all the seven hells, by every cursed thing that he had seen crawl from the frozen north … it was Selwyn!

Selwyn, fucking the wet nurse. Of course he was.

Jaime turned his back and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many thanks for all the lovely comments and all the enthusiasm you have shown this fic. It all makes me a very happy bunny.
> 
> I'm going to try and do another chapter of this before the weekend as I'm on a roll and I want to keep the momentum going. Fingers crossed for me!
> 
> In the meantime, if you'd like to get updates and teasers, please come follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/). I love to chat so come and say hello!


	4. Nasty Little Shits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They wrote to each other. What's next?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **~ Brienne ~**

Dawn broke.

Outside the king’s bedchamber, Brienne stood. Alone. Stock still. The first gilded kiss of sunlight warming her and waking her from her night-long vigil as if she had been stone and now she was a woman again.

Servants came and went for the king. His maester, too, bidding her good morning as he passed, carrying his bag and a tray of potions and tonics.

At her left hip, Oathkeeper gleamed. She had her hand wrapped about its pommel as she often did. Something to lean on, somewhere to put her hand that felt comforting. It felt like security.

At her right hip, she wore the dagger.

The dagger was a folly. A folly she had berated herself for many times throughout the night. What if someone noticed it? It was a gaudy thing, and it caught the eye, encrusted with so many jewels. And it … it was as obviously Lannister as Oathkeeper was. Even worse, it was Tarth, too. If someone saw it close enough, they might have thought she’d had it made. A sad old maid’s fantasy about a man she had not been quite woman enough to keep.

But … it felt right on her hip, too. Just as it felt right in her hand – it was just the length and shape of dagger that she liked. Had Jaime known that? She could not recall ever discussing daggers with him, or even carrying one in his presence for him to notice.

There was much about this to puzzle out.

“Good morning, Ser Brienne!” It was Lord Tyrion, who had appeared without her noticing. Made her jump out of her skin.

“My – my Lord!” Brienne exclaimed. She pulled her white cloak over the dagger as quickly as she could. He was the last person she wanted to notice it.

Lord Tyrion raised an eyebrow. “Good to see our king is being protected by such an alert guardswoman.”

Brienne felt herself flush. “It – it has been a long night, my Lord.”

Lord Tyrion said nothing more; he knocked on the king’s chamber door and let himself in.

**~ Jaime ~**

“Did you sleep well, goodfather?” Jaime asked pointedly as the serving girl poured him some wine.

“I did!” Lord Selwyn took his seat at the opposite side of the table. He had a satisfied grin on his face, Jaime noticed. He even looked lustily on the heap of eggs and bacon before him. “And you, Jaime?”

“My wife is dead,” Jaime said. “How do you think I slept?”

Selwyn pulled a sympathetic face. “And I thought you looked a little brighter this morning.”

“Brighter?”

“You’ve washed your hair. And trimmed your beard, perhaps?”

Jaime drank his wine. Pushed his bacon across his plate with his fork. “Will the babe be joining us?”

“He’s asleep, alas,” Selwyn replied. “Perhaps for lunch?”

Jaime nodded. No doubt the poor child had been kept awake half the night by the activities of his grandfather and his wet nurse.

Selwyn regarded Jaime with a look he couldn’t read. He looked … perhaps like he wanted to say something?

“I will not be here in any case,” Jaime told him quickly, before he had the means to speak whatever plagued him.

“Oh?” Selwyn asked.

“I should see the king. I am Hand, after all?”

“Of course. I’m glad you’re feeling up to it.”

He wasn’t, not at all. It had popped into his head quite at random, in fact. But somehow, seeing the king had seemed easier than being with his goodfather, unable to scrub the image of him slobbering all over Bancey’s teats.

Brienne had said her father had kept a different mistress every year, and he was an attractive enough man, Jaime supposed, but … he found it distasteful. Rude, almost. To come into a grieving man’s home and fuck members of his staff …

He turned to the serving girl, the smaller, mousier one of the two. “You,” he said, because he didn’t know her name. “Where … what happened to the boy? Brienne’s squire.”

“Podrick, milord? You – you sent him away. After … when the gods took your lady wife.”

“Oh.” Had he? Jaime had no recollection of that, and it shamed him somewhat. Brienne had been fond of that boy. “Where did I send him? Is he still in the city?”

“You sent him back to me,” Tyrion said as he entered the dining room. “The poor lad is most dismayed to be squiring for a man who hasn’t the first clue how to teach him combat.”

Jaime grunted. “Can I have him back?”

“He’s yours.” Tyrion sat down beside his brother. “May I ask why?”

“I have no one to send messages,” Jaime complained. “No one to run errands, or … or … ” Or keep an eye on things for him. Podrick was a good boy, and he was loyal – he would make sure that the relationship between Bancey and Selwyn was all it seemed to be.

“I’ll send him back as soon as we’ve broken our fast.”

“Send him via the king, would you? With a message – I wish to take lunch with His Grace.”

Tyrion raised an eyebrow. Glanced at Selwyn, who shrugged.

Jaime sighed. Was this not the sort of thing they had wanted? Why weren’t they happy?

“I will pass the message on,” Tyrion said.

**~ Brienne ~**

Ser Podrick was late.

It was not unusual on these early morning rotations – he oft found it difficult to rise on time. Her former squire was never late by more than a few moments, but it was irritating nonetheless. With so few Kingsguard, Brienne herself was stretched quite thin.

The doors to the king’s chambers opened, and Lord Tyrion emerged once again. Brienne snapped to attention, eager to show him that her earlier lapse was just that – a lapse. She kept her cloak over the dagger, too.

“You’ve woken up a little, I see,” Lord Tyrion said with a smirk.

Brienne made no reply.

“His Grace would like a word.”

“With – with me?”

“You’re the only one here, are you not?”

“Yes, but –”

“Then the king would like a word with _you_ , Ser.” He held the door open for her. She took it with a nod, noticing that his smirk had grown even more amused. He really could be quite vexing at times.

She took the door from him and closed it behind herself.

The king sat by the window, silent, his back to Brienne.

She wondered if he might be seeing things, his mind connected to some beast somewhere, perhaps soaring the skies or running the streets of some faraway place. But when she approached, she saw that his eyes were their usual dark brown colour, that he was here, with her, in this room.

“Your Grace,” she said with a bow. “You wanted to see me?”

Bran the Broken did not turn to look at her. Instead, he continued to stare at the sky above King’s Landing. “Do you know what is beyond the clouds, Ser Brienne?”

“The clouds, Your Grace? I don’t – I don’t know. The – the sky?”

“And what is beyond the sky?”

“The … gods?”

The corners of Bran the Broken’s mouth twitched a little – it was as close to an expression of amusement as she had ever seen from him. She suddenly felt like a small child, her hand cupped in her father’s hand, gazing up at the heavens from the gardens at Evenfall Hall.

As if he had read her thoughts, Bran said: “What do we see at night?”

“Stars.”

The king nodded. “The stars are more than we have ever imagined, Ser Brienne. More than even the greatest maester with the greatest mind has ever imagined.”

“What – what are they, Your Grace?”

“They are other worlds.”

“Other worlds …” Such a thing was …

“Just as there are other lands, there are also other worlds like ours. Many many many of them, more than could be counted. This … us … Westeros … all the lands in the world, we are as a grain of sand on the beach.”

“Gods …” The thought made Brienne’s mind hurt. There were so many stars in the sky. So many! “There are people in these worlds too?”

“On some of them. Many are desolate and barren. Many are fire, many are nought but ice and poisoned air.”

“You can … _see_ them?” Brienne asked.

“I can.”

“Oh. That must be …” She had no words – no words at all for how that must be.

“It is. It gives me a sensation that I am both big and small, all at once.”

Brienne nodded.

Now, Bran turned to look at her. “And … for all the million, million worlds out there, they are duplicated a million, million times.”

“Duplicated?” Now he had truly lost her.

“We can see the stars, can we not? If we were to leave this world somehow, we could travel to them, too. They are far away, unimaginably so, but they are there, and able to be seen. They are part of our reality.”

“Yes?”

“But … also, there are worlds which are _not_.”

“That are not part …? Um … oh.”

“Worlds we cannot see. That we could not travel to so easily.”

“No?”

The king tilted his head, just a little. “No,” he said. “But they exist, nonetheless.”

Brienne shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Your Grace.”

“Last night, before you came to guard my door, you made a choice, did you not? Several choices. You chose to wear your black boots and not your brown ones. You chose to put a woollen vest under your tunic, in case you were cold.”

Brienne nodded; both of those were true.

“But … for every choice you make, no matter how inconsequential, there is another world where another Brienne makes the other choice.”

“Another … Brienne?”

“Yes. There is another world where another Brienne is wearing brown boots at this moment, one who was cold without her woollen vest last night instead of warm as you were. And there is another universe where another Brienne is not even alive. Where she died bringing Jaime Lannister’s child into the world.”

Brienne gasped. Took a step back, her hand going to her heart even though there was a golden breastplate in the way. Her eyes met his, fearful. Terrified. “Your Grace!”

His eyes were on Jaime’s dagger though, albeit as empty and passionless as they ever were. He looked at it with no judgement, but with no kindness, either.

“Do you understand?” he asked after a moment. “Worlds we cannot see. Worlds where we may make different choices.”

“Is that – is that what … what _that_ is?” she managed. Her hand fluttered to the dagger on her belt. “Is that what this is? This … _him_?”

The king nodded. “He is a different Jaime. From another world.”

Brienne closed her eyes. She forced herself to breathe. Slowly. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. Her hands trembled, one at her side and one clinging to the dagger.

“I … I _saw_ him,” she whispered. “For a split second. And I can … _feel_ him. Smell him, feel the warmth of his skin. How is that possible?”

“I know not,” the king said. “I can not find another incident of it happening, not in all of the worlds, all of the universes.”

“Is it … something bad?”

“I know not,” the king said again. “But you should not fret about that. Thoughts of good and bad tie up so many minds. But many things are neither bad things nor good things. Many things just _are_.”

“Jaime …” she breathed. Jaime had been an intensely good thing. Then he had been the worst thing that had ever happened to her, but also the greatest. He was a thing too complex to think about most of the time, and he had been dead, which had been both bad and good as well.

Perhaps there was no good and bad to Jaime. Perhaps Jaime just _was_.

“Ah,” said the king. “Ser Podrick has arrived.”

“Has – has he?” Brienne looked to the door, as if somehow she could see Podrick as Bran did.

“You should leave now. You should spend the rest of the day in your tower. Consider yourself relieved, until the morrow.”

“Relieved, your Grace?”

“Yes. Perhaps you might investigate this phenomenon further, for me? Discover how it is that you have been able to cross a divide between worlds?”

“Your Grace, I … I am not the best person to answer that. Perhaps a maester, or a learned man would have more insight?”

“This has not happened to a maester. It has happened to _you_.”

Brienne swallowed. She nodded. “That is true, Your Grace.”

She dithered for a moment, while the king looked out of the window once more. After a moment, she turned to leave.

“Brienne?” he said.

She turned back, a little shocked. Never before had he addressed her so informally. Not even at Winterfell. “Y – yes?”

“His world is quite different from ours,” Bran told her. “He has made many many different choices.”

**~ Jaime ~**

The king had his curtains closed.

He had candles lit and a cloak about his shoulders, the collar lined with black fur. By the fire, his direwolf slept, snoring a rumble that sounded to Jaime like a far-off avalanche.

Night and winter both followed the king, even this far south. If Jaime had opened the curtains, he would not have been surprised to see snow falling, the grey battlements of some godsforsaken Northern stronghold on the horizon.

The table was laid simply, with wooden cups and a jug of ale. The king made an effort with guests, but he and Jaime had supped on rats and drank only melted snow for long moons in the frozen north. Somehow, whenever they ate together, it felt more true to life to eat simply, as if to remind themselves that they were still those men. Those warriors, those brothers. It was that bond that they ruled their kingdom with.

“Jaime –” Jon threw his arms about his Hand’s shoulders. Drew him close and hugged him. Pulled back to regard him with soft grey eyes. “I was so pleased to get your message.”

Jaime nodded. His throat was too thick, too choked to reply. Jon squeezed his shoulder. Pulled a chair out for him.

Jaime sat.

Servants, a Northern boy, a Dothraki boy, brought food. A thick-crusted pie that oozed gravy onto a pile of greens beside it. A heel of bread each, with soft butter.

Good Northern fare. Food that kept you warm. The kind of food they fantasised about together while they were starving and skinny beyond what remained of the Wall.

Jon poured ale. Jaime drank it.

“How are you?” Jon asked, taking a pull from his own cup.

Jaime shook his head. “Not … not good.”

“I’m sorry. You know how sorry I am. Brienne … she saved my life more times than I can remember.”

Jaime remembered it, but his memories of the war against the dead seemed so unreal and hazy since it had ended. So much of it was just darkness. So much just coldness. Desperation. Hunger and exhaustion and pain and night. Six moons of unending night. And in the middle of it all, he had loved Brienne.

Brienne … tearing through the endless blizzard, her sword alight in a stream of blue fire. Her crooked teeth bared, her armour encrusted with frost, felling wight after wight after wight.

He had loved her. It had been like a kind of madness then – so consuming it had been his entire reason for living. He could not die, he loved Brienne. He could not get tired, he loved Brienne. He could not get injured, or give up, or get sloppy with his swordstrokes. He loved Brienne, he had to live for Brienne. He had to live for the next time he could hold her.

He had taken her maidenhead in a Wildling’s bed. Which was to say a dirty pile of furs on a dirty floor in a tumbledown shack in the Frostfangs – thinking back on it now he was almost horrified. She was highborn, a lady, and the heir to Tarth besides. He should have waited, should have wed her first in the sight of the gods, should have done it on a featherbed and silk sheets as she deserved.

But then, those things had seemed so far away, like things they would not survive to see. Despite the crudeness of their surroundings, that first time had been wonderful: the most tender, the most sensual, the most romantic lovemaking Jaime could ever have imagined. The moonlight through the hole in the roof, the gentle cascade of snowflakes, Brienne’s hot breath on his cheek and her naked strength beneath him.

Never mind that there had been twenty other people in the room with them, never mind that they had both been filthy and hungry and shivering with cold. None of that had mattered. Only the soft, eager press of her mouth, the sweet blue of her glittering eyes in the darkness and the firelight. Only her trust and her desire and _her_.

He had loved her. He had loved her _so much_.

He had finished his ale, he realised, before he had so much as sunk a fork into his pie. Jon was looking at him. As if waiting for him to say something.

“Sorry … what?”

“I asked if there was a reason for your visit.”

That was Jon. He could be blunt in a way that Jaime found unfamiliar to Lannister sensibilities, but that made things simple – if he liked you, you knew. If he did not, there was no pretence. You dealt with it and moved on.

Fortunately, that had not been a problem for Jon and Jaime. During the Long Night, Jon had been a brother in a way that Tyrion could never be, a brother-at-arms, someone who held your life in their hands, as you held theirs. A Night’s Watchman had that advantage – serving among thieves, rapers and traitors to the crown made him size a man’s worth in more than his misdeeds. Jon had looked and seen Jaime the way Brienne had – as a man who had slain his king for the right reasons. As a man and not an act.

“Not that my Lord Hand needs a reason. But … it has been a while. Understandably.”

“To be honest with you, I didn’t want another moment alone with my goodfather.”

“Truly?”

Jaime stabbed his pie. Steak and kidney fell out in a glut of thick gravy. “The Evenstar had been here for three days, and he’s already fucking my wet nurse.”

That made Jon laugh, which was rare enough, but his own laughter made the king blush and apologise. “That is not funny, I realise.”

By the hearth, Ghost lifted his head from his paws and flicked his scarred ears.

Jaime waved his hand. “I’m not the man to ask right now about what is funny.”

“No. I expect not.”

Jaime’s eyes filled with tears again – that he had kept them at bay thus far was miracle enough. He shoved a forkful of pie into his mouth, hoping he could swallow them with it.

Jon’s eyes did not leave him. They ached with sympathy. “You must be walking through the Seven Hells, Jaime. I know … I know how much you loved her.”

Jaime nodded.

“I loved her, too. We all shared something … all of us who went out into the Night. The few of us who came back …”

Jon closed his own eyes. There had been so many deaths out in the Lands of Always Winter, but none more tragic, more awful, than that of Daenerys Targaryen. Jaime was never sure what had happened between Jon and the woman he later revealed was his aunt, but he would never forget Jon’s cry at her broken body falling from her dragon, her blood washing across the white dune of snow, her violet eyes dull and dead.

He would never forget how it had turned Jon from a Bastard Wolf into a Dragon.

Jaime reached across the table and took Jon’s hand. Jon squeezed his in return. “We shared much,” he agreed.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne sat at her desk, a fresh piece of parchment before her. Her quill dipped in her ink. Her palms sweating, a full glass of wine beside her. She was, after all, relieved until the morrow.

_Jaime,_

she wrote,

_Are you here?_

She waited. Watching the parchment. It was true, she could not feel him right now, there was no sense of him in the room, but ... it was real. Bran had said it was real.

She got up. Banked the fire. Paced the floor. Yelled at her squires for clattering the lunch plates. Drank her wine.

Nothing. Not so much as a scratch of ink.

_Jaime_

She wrote again.

_Please._

She crossed the last word out, crossed it some more. Covered it with ink. It sounded uncomfortably like begging. She wasn’t going to beg him. Not ever again.

There was a knock at her solar door. Brienne bristled and leapt to her feet.

“I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed!” she yelled as she yanked the door open.

But it wasn’t one of her squires. It was Lord Bronn.

“You told me no such thing,” he grinned.

“Oh. Tis you.”

“The very same!” He bowed extravagantly. “I heard you had the day off.”

“The king has given me a … task.”

“Ooh a task? A very important task? A by-royal-decree task? You want to fuck it off and come out for a drink?”

“A drink?”

“You remember drinking, yes? A shitty tavern in Flea Bottom … ale goes in your mouth, you swallow it?”

She made a face.

“Come on. Just one.”

She glanced over at the parchment on her desk. Nothing there. Only her own writing. Only the word she had crossed out. It was no good – Jaime wasn’t here.

Brienne turned back to Bronn. “Just one, then.”

He grinned.

**~ Jaime ~**

Selwyn sat at the dining table, a half-eaten dish of fish and greens in butter sauce in front of him.

He had the babe in his arms, cooing to him. Jaime stood in the doorway.

“Ah look!” Selwyn smiled. “Papa is home.”

“Papa?” Jaime asked.

“You’re his Papa, are you not? Unless you’re accusing my daughter of bedding another?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Then you’re Mykael’s Papa.”

“M – Mykael?”

“The babe needs a name, Jaime. He’s heir to two houses – he deserves one, don’t you think?”

“I’m – I’m not –”

“Mykael was to have been Brienne’s name had she been a boy. I’ve always liked it. So unless you have another name?”

Jaime shook his head. “Brienne and I … we – we could not agree. We said we would wait to see what he looked like.”

Selwyn turned in his seat, showing the babe’s face to Jaime. “Well? Does he look like a Mykael?”

The babe had his eyes open; Jaime couldn’t breathe. His eyes … they were large and blue. All babes’ eyes were blue at first, he knew, but … Tyrion was right. They were Brienne’s eyes. Her _beautiful_ eyes!

Jaime let out a sob that turned into a moan. Gods … his son was perfect. He had a serious brow, a strong nose. Little rosebud lips that moved in a sucking motion. Jaime moved closer. Closer still.

He reached out his fingertips. Brushed the babe’s cheek. His son turned in the direction of his stroking fingers, his mouth open as if rooting for a non-existent teat.

“Mykael …” Jaime breathed. “Lord Mykael Lannister.”

“What think you?” asked Selwyn. His voice was soft.

“I … I like it.” He liked the strength of it, the softness, too. He liked that it would have been Brienne’s name. There was a tribute in that, of sorts. “Thank you.”

Selwyn nodded. “Would you, perhaps … like to hold him?”

Jaime pulled his hand back. He wanted to … he truly did, but … “I can’t.”

“When you’re ready. But … he’ll be smiling soon. You’ll want to be holding him then.”

A smile … Jaime looked back down at his babe. Mykael would have smiled for Brienne, he knew. The way that babes smiled for their mothers … like they were the most beautiful thing in all this world. Brienne would have loved that – to be loved in the way that babes love their mothers … it would have meant so much to her.

Only … she would never know it. Mykael would never know it, either. All he would have was a miserable, drunken Lannister for a father. A man who did not deserve to see the smiles of such a perfect child.

Jaime fled into his solar.

The room was warm, as if a fire had been burning just a short time ago. There was a glass of wine on his desk, and a piece of parchment, too.

Brienne ...

He had kept the piece of parchment they had written to each other on yesterday. He’d kept it tucked into his tunic, so it was close to his heart. He had checked it periodically, to see if there was anything more on it.

He had not realised she could get another piece of parchment by herself.

He rounded the desk. Sat in the chair.

_Jaime_

She had written.

_Are you here?_

He had not been. He had been out, taking lunch with the king. Reminiscing about lost love instead of here, talking to Brienne’s shade.

Beneath, she had written

_Jaime_

again. Then she had crossed something out, so many times the ink had spread into the paper. It was still wet.

Jaime grabbed for a quill.

_I am here._

He wrote.

Then he waited. Waited more. The room grew cold as the heat from the fire that had never been lit dissipated. The scent of Brienne was faint. The wine had specks of dust in it. The imprint of her lips faded on the rim.

She did not reply.

**~ Brienne ~**

“What about him?” Bronn jabbed a finger across the bar at a slumped figure at a table in the corner. He was covered in a cloak; he was of indeterminate age. There was vomit on his beard.

“No,” said Brienne, for at least the fortieth time that evening.

“What about _him_ , then?” Now he was pointing at the pot boy, weaving his way through the crowd with a tray of empty cups.

“He can’t be any older than twelve!” Brienne gave Bronn a withering look.

“So you’re telling me … there is not a _single_ man in this bar that you would fuck?”

“Of course not. I am Lord Commander –”

“—of the Kingsguard. I had noticed. But … all right, if you weren’t. Would you fuck a man then?”

“Why? What does it possibly matter to you?”

Bronn shrugged. “Maybe it seems like a waste.”

Brienne laughed. Sipped her ale. Despite her promise to just come out for one drink, somehow it had turned into four. “A waste of _what_?”

He turned to her, looking serious. Looking more serious than she had ever seen him. “A waste of _you_.”

Brienne laughed again. The ale made her feel a little giddy, she had to admit.

Bronn did not turn away. Did not stop looking at her.

She raised an eyebrow. “There’s nothing to waste. I promise.”

“Golden bollocks didn’t think so, did he?”

Brienne scoffed. “I don’t want to –”

“I know you don’t. I noticed that. Broke your heart, did he – running back here to get a face full of bricks with his sister?”

“Don’t.” She had to stop her hand from going for her sword. She had to grip the edge of the table.

“Mmm, I thought so. Well, you need to get over it.”

“What?”

“You need to get over it. He was a pretty bastard, I’ll give you that. But it was never going to end in a happy ever after – he was a fucked up sister-fucking cunt.”

“I –”

“He _was_. But look on the bright side, there’s not another man in this city, probably not in Westeros, who’s going to fuck off and leave you for his sister. So the way I reckon it, you’re pretty safe to open your legs again.”

Brienne gaped. She had no air in her lungs – her heart wasn’t beating.

Bronn raised his glass. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Brienne burst out laughing. It was an ugly sound, near-hysterical, and it hurt her deep in her chest. “You want me to open my legs?”

“Why not? You like it, it feels good, doesn’t it? I think it might do you some good.”

“Truly?” She leaned close to Bronn. “What if I opened my legs to you? Would that do me good?”

He blinked, wide-eyed. “You what?”

“Isn’t that what this is about? Your constant obsession with me bedding someone. Do you perhaps want to bed me yourself?”

“Now hold on –”

“Perhaps you want to know what I’m like down there too? There does seem to be some interest – do you and Lord Tyrion have a wager that I might be hiding a cock?”

“I never said that.”

“No, you just said that having sex would make me happier. Does that work for all the whores you bed? You, and Tyrion, and Podrick too? Do you think _those_ women are happier people for getting a dose of cock from anyone rich enough to buy their bodies for an hour? Or do you think it more likely that they grit their teeth and endure it, so their sick mothers don’t starve, or their children have a place to sleep each night?”

“Look –”

“You don’t care about anyone’s happiness, Lord Bronn, least of all mine. All you want to do is turn me into an acceptable man, one who treats the smallfolk carelessly and callously, one who reflects your own venality back at you and doesn’t remind you of the heartbreak that men like you leave in their wake.”

She stood up, her hand going back to the dagger at her belt. _That_ dagger, _their_ dagger, gleaming with emeralds and sapphires both.

“And don’t you dare speak to me of Jaime, ever again. You know nothing of what went on between us, of what we had. If you think a roll in the sheets with some drunk or a buck-toothed city watchman will make me ‘get over’ him, you’ve quite lost your wits. Goodnight, my Lord.”

She pushed past him, shaking. Pushed her way out of the tavern and into the stinking night air of Flea Bottom.

Above her, the Red Keep loomed in the gloaming. She set her eyes on the White Sword Tower, and started walking home.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime started awake. The sound of bootsteps on the rushes woke him.

He’d fallen asleep at his desk at some time before sundown; when he woke up, night had fallen.

The servants had been in at some point- the candles were lit and the curtains were drawn. A fire roared in the grate.

Jaime sat up. Wiped the drool from his beard.

Brienne was here.

It had been her footsteps, he was sure of it. He knew her gait, the sound of her weight on the flagstones, the scrape of her boots on the rug.

He felt her sit down, too. On the very chair he was sitting in; there was a sudden movement of air around him. The cushion beneath his arse shifted a little. He was surrounded by her scent.

A moment later, words appeared on the parchment before him.

_Jaime_

She wrote.

_I’m back._

**~ Brienne ~**

He was there. She felt him as soon as she walked into the solar, and knew that he was asleep. The room was filled with his breath, with the warmth of his sleeping body.

She lit the candles. Lit a fire. Sat at the desk.

Yes. He had written to her. Just a single line, just

_I am here_

but she knew that already.

_Jaime_

she wrote in reply.

 _I’m back_.

He answered at once, slow, painstaking letters that appeared on the parchment one at a time.

_I miss you so much. I love you so much,_

he wrote.

_Death will never change that._

Brienne took a breath.

_Jaime, I am not dead. I am not the Brienne that you were wed to, but one who lives still, as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. For me, it is you who are dead and lost to me some seven moons ago. The king explained to me this morning – we are from different worlds._

She waited for a moment. Then –

_I do not understand_

came back.

**~ Jaime ~**

Jaime stared at the parchment. He read and re-read Brienne’s last message – it made no sense.

Then more words appeared below his:

_There are many Briennes, as there are many Jaimes, as best I understand it. Worlds that are alike, but where decisions we have made have changed things for us. In my world, I did not bear your child, and so I did not die in childbed. I remain alive, a knight, as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. And there are choices you made that led to your death just the same._

There was a pause as he read through this, and just as he picked his quill up, more appeared below his hand.

_Can you speak to the king? He can explain it far better than I._

Jaime blinked. Wrote back:

_I ate lunch with the king today. I am his Hand._

No sooner had he finished than Brienne wrote

_This is a good example. In my world, it is your brother Tyrion who is Hand of the King._

That made Jaime laugh out loud. He knew it was a job his brother coveted – one he thought he was more suited to than Jaime.

But Jon, he knew, would never want Tyrion so close. He mistrusted him as it was – he would have much preferred he were exiled at Casterly Rock.

Oh – that was a good point.

_Who is your king?_

Jaime asked. Surely it could not be Jon, not if Tyrion was Hand.

_His Grace Bran the Broken_

Brienne replied, courteous to the last.

_Brandon Stark_

she wrote as an afterthought. Jaime blinked.

_The boy I flung from the tower?_

He wrote, before he’d had the chance to consider if that was wise.

_Yes_

Brienne replied.

Jaime sat back and screwed up his brow. Brandon Stark was king? Brandon Stark?! In what way, through whose lineage, had that come about? He could not fathom it.

_Is he not your king?_

Brienne wrote then.

Jaime replied:

_My King is Aegon VI Targaryen. The man who led us from the endless dark into a new dawn. Azor Ahai, the Prince Who Was Promised. Jon is my best friend and my brother both._

**~ Brienne ~**

_My best friend and my brother both._

Brienne stared at that for a long moment. She could not imagine Jaime declaring he had a best friend. Not _her_ Jaime.

Again, her hand drifted to the dagger.

Not _her_ Jaime.

Then she noticed the name. He had said Aegon IV Targaryen, and at first, she had assumed he was talking about Rhaegar’s son with Elia, the infant who had been murdered at Tywin Lannister’s behest in her world. But …

_Jon_

_Jon is my best friend and my brother both._

She dipped her quill in her own inkwell.

_Jon Snow?_

she asked. There had been rumours, including one from her own father, that the bastard son of Winterfell was secretly the son that Rhaegar Targaryen had got on Lyanna Stark. That Lord Eddard had raised him in secret to keep him safe from Robert Baratheon.

Father claimed he had received a letter from Lord Varys, shortly before the Dragon Queen destroyed King’s Landing, detailing this. Brienne had never paid the rumour much heed – it was irrelevant in any case, after Jon’s exile to the Wall.

_Yes_

came the answer.

_It seems our worlds are quite different._

They were, they truly were.

Brienne was poised to write as such when Jaime wrote again:

_But you are Brienne, and I am Jaime. That much is the same._

Brienne chewed her lip.

_In a way,_

she replied.

He wrote:

_In every way that counts. Both of us were torn from each other by the Stranger, yet look at us now! Our love is strong enough to move worlds._

Their love.

Was that the answer that Bran sought? That they were reunited because of _love_?

Brienne couldn’t help but think of Bran’s face – his near-amusement at her notion that the gods lived in the sky. Is that what happened when you knew how many worlds existed? Did even the gods become small when you were as powerful as he?

Their love … she couldn’t.

_It is late,_

she wrote.

_I guarded the king’s bedchamber last night, so I am tired, and I must sleep now._

_Goodnight, Jaime_

she finished. Put her quill down and walked away.

She could not bear to write more.

**~ Jaime ~**

She left the room, but Jaime followed her. Followed the wake of air that moved around her body as she walked. The smell of her skin as she undressed, the squeak of her armour as she put it on the stand. He moved with her to the washbowl, felt her bend to splash her face in the water. Stand to dry herself. The heat from the friction of her towel; the movement of her hands. So close he could have gone on tiptoe to kiss the tender skin at the back of her neck.

She undressed, and went to bed.

Jaime went to bed beside her. He didn’t light a candle or the fire. Here in the dark, it felt like she was real. Like he could touch her.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne didn’t light a candle. She undressed in the dark.

He was with her. Watching her. The ghost of his breath on her neck, the prickle of that touch that wasn’t touch.

She slid her sleeping shift over her head, let the soft linen glide down her sides.

She thought of Jaime. Of Jaime. His serious face when he touched her, the earnest look on his face when he kissed her. He was here now, as she slid beneath her sheets.

They lay together, breathing. Breathing beside each other. He in his world, she in hers.

**~ Jaime ~**

He reached for her. Touched her thigh, the warmth of it, the warmth of where her skin was in her world.

He felt her jump, felt her shudder, but felt her lean into his touch as well. She shifted on the mattress. His hand grew warm, as it would on the soft, furred flesh of her inner thigh. He stroked her with his thumb.

**~ Brienne ~**

Was it the ale she had drunk with Bronn? Was it Jaime’s words, the thought of Jaime? Was it thinking of him while she undressed in the dark?

Was it this, was it _now_ , feeling the sensation of a hand on her leg? Not just any hand. Jaime’s hand. Jaime’s touch. Her body knew him. Her body had never forgotten.

Was he here? Could he see her? The room was darkness.

She slid her hands between her legs. Found herself wet. Warm. Gasped at the sensation.

**~ Jaime ~**

She gasped.

He didn’t hear it so much as feel it – that sudden start of breath that budged the mattress imperceptibly. But he’d made Brienne gasp so many times, with his tongue or his fingers or even just the pressure of his body atop hers … he knew how it felt.

He felt her stretch out beside him, her body beginning to roll in slow, shuddering waves. She was touching herself, he knew. He had watched Brienne make herself come many times. He knew how that felt, too.

Her knees were raised – he could picture her now. Her head would be flung back on the pillows, her eyes closed. Her mouth slightly open. She would be using both hands, he knew.

Her knees were raised, so he slid his own foot beneath where one would be. Twined his ankle under hers. She could feel him, he knew. She turned her foot to rub his toes with hers.

He let go of her thigh to undo his own breeches.

**~ Brienne ~**

Was Jaime touching himself too?

Beside her, there was a bounce to the mattress, the soft hiss of breath through teeth. His foot arched against hers.

She had never seen Jaime pleasure himself, save for those last frantic few seconds before he spent on her belly. But the thought of it … Jaime … beautiful Jaime … stroking his beautiful cock …

**~ Jaime ~**

The air was thick with the scent of her arousal, and his own. His hand slid the length of his cock, faster and faster. Alternating his grip, twisting his hand a little as he caressed the tip, the shaft so thick, his balls so full …

Gods, it felt good. So good. So good to feel something good.

He had not brought himself to pleasure since Brienne had died – how could he? But she was here, she was _here_.

Brienne grabbed his arm and cried out, and he heard it. He heard it!

The sound took him tumbling over the edge.

**~ Brienne ~**

The pleasure was fierce and bright in her bones, and Brienne had hold of Jaime’s arm. His arm was warm, and real. She cried out, and then Jaime cried out, too. A splash of something warm and wet hit her hand.

She opened her eyes.

**~ Jaime ~**

He opened his eyes.

He saw his seed – it had squirted with some force over his jerkin. Over his arm. Over her hand.

Her hand …

**~ Brienne ~**

Her hand was on his arm. Gripping his arm. Covered in his seed.

His arm …

His arm was _there._ It was dark, but she could see it. She could see …

**~ Jaime ~**

Her hand was on his arm. And his leg was wound around hers.

The sheets were rucked, the blankets were gone. But she was _there_. Actually there.

She yelled out. Flew off the bed, yanking her shift down to cover herself. Backed against the wall.

Jaime scrambled out of bed, too. Shoved his cock in his breeches.

**~ Brienne ~**

They stood, looking at each other across the room. It was dark. Too dark. All she could see was his eyes … and long hair? Did he have _long hair_?

He lit a candle.

**~ Jaime ~**

He lit a candle.

He looked at her. Saw the look in her eyes, her beautiful blue eyes. He knew she must be seeing the same look on his face, too.

They didn’t recognise each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you haven't seen my Tumblr or Twitter this week then I'm a little late in posting because of a health problem last week. But I'm feeling better and back on the horse. HUGE thanks to everyone who sent me such lovely messages wishing me well, I was really touched.
> 
> There will be another chapter next week before I take a little break to write my entry for the Smut Exchange. Also, I should probably finish Lions of the Rock! But I'm on a roll and I didn't want to leave you with a cliffhanger like this. I'm not that mean.
> 
> If you're interested in saying hi, or getting teasers etc for this story and others, please consider following me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/). Hope to see you there!


	5. One Such As Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They appeared. What happens next?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **~ Jaime ~**

He looked at her. She looked at him. Wide-eyed, breathing hard.

Jaime didn’t understand. He’d been … with Brienne? It had been Brienne who lay beside him, Brienne who had touched herself, Brienne whose leg had wound around his and whose hand had clutched at his arm in her pleasure. But this woman …

“You’re … _not_ Brienne,” he said after a moment.

On her side of the bed, the strange woman edged along the wall, her eyes never leaving Jaime. There was an armour stand, and she darted to it. Pulled a sword from the scabbard and held it out before her. Her hands trembled on the golden hilt. “And you … you’re not Jaime, either!”

Jaime had no weapons to grab; even his golden hand had vanished from his dressing table. In fact, his whole dressing table had vanished.

He raised his arms as if surrendering.

Perhaps if the woman came closer, he could grab the sword from her … or there was a wine glass on the bedside table. If he got to it, he could throw it … he could run, he could tackle her. She wasn’t so much bigger than him.

They walked around each other slowly, carefully. Circling the bed. Circling each other.

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne breathed hard. Her heart thumped so hard she could hear it. “Who … who in all the hells _are_ you?”

Oh, he looked like Jaime, a little. He had the same sharp eyes, the same broken nose. But his hair … it was long, and curled, and very very golden. So golden it glowed in the candlelight.

He walked around her again; she walked around him. Holding him at bay with the point of Oathkeeper.

**~ Jaime ~**

He drew closer. Looked closer. Slowly, slowly. Holding her eyes, so she didn’t notice him creep towards her.

Perhaps there _was_ something of Brienne about her? The resemblance was there, particularly her eyes, but ...

“You’re older,” he said. “Shorter. Not so ... _big_.”

**~ Brienne ~**

“And you’re younger than Jaime,” she whispered. “Your hair is different. And … he did not have green eyes.”

“A Lannister without green eyes?” The man’s lips twisted into an amused smirk that significantly increased his resemblance to Jaime. “Unheard of!”

He was edging closer, thinking she hadn’t noticed. His body was tensed, ready to strike. His hand all but twitched in preparation. He was going to try to take her sword from her – no, he was _not_ Jaime. Jaime would never have thought her so green.

Was he shorter, too? Perhaps a little.

**~ Jaime ~**

He lunged.

But not for her sword hand – not as she oh-so clearly expected him to. Instead, he darted to her right, to that armour stand. Shoved it at her.

That caught her by surprise – it toppled into her, knocked her backwards, knocked her onto her arse. She went down in a tangle of white legs and white linen sleeping garb. Bashed in the mouth by a pretty gold pauldron, hard enough to split her lip.

She clung to her sword. Kicked the armour aside with a grunt of rage.

She hadn’t noticed, he realised with a burst of satisfaction. Hadn’t seen how he had pulled the dagger from the other side of the swordbelt even as he’d shoved the armour stand at her. He sprang at the woman now, the dagger in his hand, going for her throat.

The Others take her – she had seen _that_! She’d twisted, got a knee up between them somehow. She was strong, too – she kicked him off with ease. Jaime hit the floor, his head bouncing off the breastplate so hard it made him curse. He leapt back to his feet and flew at her again.

Again she caught him, a blow to his chest with the pommel of her sword. He yanked at her shift and brought her down with him. Falling with a crunch to the flagstones and the rushes and the rug.

They rolled, kicking and punching and trying to get their blades up. Both of them blocking every thrust of the other.

She knew him, he realised. Knew his moves, knew where he would try to strike her next. Even his dirtiest, most underhanded tricks. Even the knee he tried to shove in her belly, even the stump he tried to slam into her throat.

“Who are you?” he growled, getting the point of the dagger under her chin. Pressing hard enough to draw a bead of blood. “How have you done this?”

**~ Brienne ~**

This was ridiculous. Brienne was sprawled on her back, dagger at her throat. The dagger _he_ had given her! He had her swordhand pinned with his knee, but he’d left her left hand free.

Brienne groped around for something, anything … her fingertips caught the edge of her pauldron; it had come loose from her armour stand when he had pushed it into her. She grabbed it. Brought it up in a brutal arc, catching the side of his head so hard the thing actually _clanged_.

“Fuck!” he cried. Tried to clutch at his head with a hand that wasn’t there.

He looked dazed; he looked _furious_. Teeth bared, he sprang to his haunches, the dagger still in his hand. Brienne grabbed Oathkeeper. Thrust it right against his heart.

“Stop!” she cried.

“Stop?! I ought to cut your throat right now. Impersonating my lady wife. You’re no ghost, and you’re certainly not Brienne!”

“I am! I am … I am Ser Brienne of Tarth!” she told him, panting. Still holding him at bay with the tip of her sword. “Daughter of Lord Selwyn, Kingsguard to Renly Baratheon, sworn sword to Lady Catelyn and Lady Sansa Stark. I _am_ Brienne. I swear it by the old gods and the new.”

**~ Jaime ~**

He could see her sweat. The point of her sword pressed to the bare skin of his chest, hard enough to hurt.

She took one hand off the hilt – the ornate, golden, lion-headed hilt – the hilt that looked very much like the dagger he had in his hand, the hilt that was identical to Oathkeeper’s. She lifted her hand, palm towards him.

“Stop,” she said again. “I’m going to lower my sword now. Swear to me you will stop.”

He started to scoff, but her face was deadly solemn. Her eyes full … full of _trust_. Just like …

He sighed. “Very well. On my _honour._ As a knight, yes?”

She nodded. Slowly, she lowered her sword. Jaime swallowed. Even now, there were few people, dangerously few, who would trust the Kingslayer thus. He lowered the dagger, too, dropped it to the bed behind him.

“Now,” she said. “You are Ser Jaime Lannister. Yes? Son of Lord Tywin, a Lion of the Rock?”

“I am.”

She nodded again. “Yes. And you wrote to me. Letters … messages … in the solar of this very tower?”

“I wrote those to my wife!”

“I am not your wife,” she said. Her voice trembled, only a little. “You can see that, as I can see that you are not the Jaime I knew. But nonetheless, I am Brienne of Tarth. His Grace ... Brandon Stark ... explained it to me.”

“Many ... worlds, you said?”

“Yes. Many worlds. As many as the decisions we make, as many as the choices we choose. Normally, we cannot see these other worlds, but somehow ... somehow, we have managed to find each other. Make contact with each other.”

“Somehow, we do not look right to each other.”

“No. I – I did not anticipate that. It shocked me. Particularly after ...”

Yes. _That._ Jaime could not bear to think of it, despite the warmth of residual pleasure that suffused his loins still. He had _touched_ her, almost. Pleasured himself right beside her, as she had pleasured herself. Thinking he was doing it with Brienne, imagining his lady wife and not this slender stranger who had Brienne’s eyes. And her voice. And ...

He stared at her now, peered intently. Walked around her once again.

“There _are_ similarities,” he concluded after a good look at her face from every angle. “A resemblance, but … it is the resemblance of a sister, perhaps? A relative?”

She nodded. “Yes. It is quite the same for you.”

“And your voice!” He felt himself smile, even as tears pricked his eyes and stung the back of his throat. To hear Brienne’s voice again … he had to admit ...

She nodded. “Yours, as well. And … you _feel_ the same. You … your smell … the warmth of you. That is –”

She stammered now, and looked away, and it was the most adorably _Brienne_ thing … he had an urge to throw his arms about her and kiss her.

She did not blush, though, not as his lady wife would have done if she thought she had misspoken. She was not so freckled, either.

And her face …

He reached for her cheek with his fingers before remembering himself. Clenched his hand into a fist. “You – you don’t have the scar!”

Her brows knitted in confusion.

“The Inn at the Crossroads – you – _she_ – fought Biter, and –”

“Biter?”

“This did not happen to you?”

She shook her head.

“No. You don’t bear the mark of Lady Stoneheart’s noose, either.”

“A – a _noose_?!” Her eyes went wide.

Jaime scoffed. “Be glad that didn’t happen to you, my Lady.”

He noticed that her eyes went to what remained of his right arm, then.

He held it up for her to see the ruined stump. “I presume _this_ sorry sight was the same for your Jaime?”

“It was.”

He sighed. Perhaps every Jaime in every one of these worlds of Brandon Stark’s was destined to lose his sword hand. Perhaps the gift of swordsmanship that he’d possessed was so great that even the Warrior himself had been envious of his skill. Perhaps …

Her eyes … they went soft at his silence, just as gentle and soft as Brienne’s would have been. Full of sympathy, full of understanding. She really did have astonishingly similar eyes.

She knew him, he realised with a pang deep in his belly. Knew him as his wife had done. Knew how the loss of his hand had made him feel.

**~ Brienne ~**

“I wonder, how are we here?” Brienne asked. “How is it we can we see each other, when before we could not?”

Jaime shook his head. “I know not. But … I have felt you. In my chambers – the feeling has been growing stronger. It has been happening more and more in recent days.”

“Yes. I have had the same.”

“And now … well, we pleasured ourselves, and –”

“Stop,” she said. “That was … it was …”

He sighed. He looked troubled by it, too.

“Perhaps it is all right. We are both torn by grief,” Jaime said after a moment. “Seeing each other … finding each other this way. You are Brienne in a way, as I am Jaime, and … there is no dishonour here. No infidelity.”

“Infidelity!?”

“You died five weeks ago. My wife did. I … it is not as though you are another woman …”

“Oh.”

“This … was not _that._ I am no adulterer.”

“No,” Brienne agreed. That was one thing Jaime was not – though in the past, that had not worked in her favour.

“You are my wife still. Another Brienne, yes, but … Brienne nonetheless. I have not been unfaithful. And neither have you to your lord husband.”

Brienne swallowed. Her … _husband_? Such a thing was almost too big for her to think of.

They both fell silent.

**~ Jaime ~**

Brienne was prettier in this world, a traitorous part of his brain noticed. Not that she was _pretty_ , far from it, but somehow her age gave her a bearing, a regality, that his Brienne had lacked. She was almost a handsome woman, despite her weak chin and crooked nose.

Perhaps the short hair helped? The long neck? The longer fingers? The fact she had all her teeth?

She looked like a woman made for commanding men into battle, he thought. She looked like she had _seen things_.

His Brienne had been raw bravery, raw honour, raw untamed innocence. This Brienne looked as though she knew _life._ Probably, he thought, she had known men before her Jaime.

He wasn’t sure if the thought made him jealous or aroused.

They had fallen silent, he realised.

He was staring again, but so was she.

**~ Brienne ~**

Gods, he was beautiful.

Her Jaime had been beautiful, of course, with his square jaw and his irresistible smile. She had been weak and useless in his presence sometimes, rendered stammering, awkward, fidgety whenever his gaze had landed on her.

But this Jaime … he was quite something else. He was far more like his sister, which pained Brienne to admit, even in the deepest recesses of her mind. But there it was. He was far … _prettier_ , as if the gods had taken all her Jaime’s features and ever-so-slightly feminised them.

He had longer eyelashes, bigger eyes, which of course sparkled in that rich, emerald green. His lips were fuller and pinker, and his face was finer-boned, with high cheekbones more akin to Cersei’s. The way he moved, too. His footsteps were more elegant, the way he put his hand on his hip more dainty, his fingers more slender and better manicured.

Nor could she imagine her Jaime wearing such extravagant clothes. He had worn leather, mostly, the occasional scarf at his throat to add a little colour. This Jaime was nowhere near so restrained. He was garbed in a doublet of red velvet, slashed with cloth-of-gold. It was unbuttoned near down to his navel, his chest still glistening with the sweat of his pleasure and from their fight. His red leather breeches fit him like a second skin, too, displaying the pleasing curve of his buttocks, the lithe strength of his thighs.

He looked like a man made for fighting and fucking both.

She became aware that she had not spoken in near a minute. But neither had he.

Perhaps they just needed to _look_.

**~ Jaime ~**

They smiled at each other’s staring. Almost chagrined at their fascination with each other. A little overcome.

“May I ask you an unchivalrous question, my Lady?”

Her eyebrows lifted skyward. “I – I suppose so.”

“How old are you?”

“Oh. I – I will be forty on my next nameday.”

“Forty!”

“An old woman,” she said with a self-deprecating smile. “Though not yet an old knight.”

“No indeed,” he said.

“And you?” She rubbed her palms on her thighs as if they were sweaty. “If I may be equally unchivalrous?”

“Six-and-thirty. Not far behind you.”

“My Jaime was more than a decade older than you are. Eight-and-forty when the Stranger took him.”

He laughed. “In my world, you were but four-and-twenty!”

“A girl!” she exclaimed.

He nodded. “Just a girl.” He had to look away, then. Blink rapidly; swallow hard.

She took a step closer to him – her hands twitched in his direction too – wanting to console him, just as his Brienne would have done. Comfort him. Hold him.

“Were we wed long for you?” he asked her. “Before I died? Perhaps since _you_ were four-and-twenty? I rather like the thought that we had more years together … somewhere.”

But she shook her head. “No. Not wed … that is … after … after we fought the dead … then I … he …”

Now it was her turn to blink and turn away. Her chin wobbled.

“I am sorry,” he whispered. “I should know how painful it would be to talk of it.”

She lifted her chin, almost defiant. “It is _fine_. It – it does not upset me to talk of it. I am fine.”

This Brienne was pighead stubborn as well, it seemed. Jaime would have laughed if he were not still so close to crying.

“How did you meet me?” he asked. “Him, I mean. The other me. Was it … were you –?”

“I was Lady Catelyn’s sworn sword,” she finished for him.

He nodded. “And I, her prisoner, rotting in the dungeon of Riverrun?”

“Not … _Riverrun_ , but … yes! I was sent to King’s Landing to exchange you for Lady Stark’s daughters.”

He scoffed out a little laughter. “It seems that much is the same, at least. But … there was no Biter, and no Lady Stoneheart for you? And so you did not come for me at Pennytree?”

She shook her head, her brow creasing in confusion.

“So, in your world, how … _when_ was it that we came to fall in love?”

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne lowered her head.

_Fall in love?_

Was that what had happened between her and Jaime? She felt something of a fraud, suddenly. Love had never been declared, and they had spent such a short time together. There had been beddings aplenty, and certainly there had been … _something_ , at least on her part. Sometimes, in Jaime’s eyes when he looked at her from across a room … perhaps …

Yet this Jaime had assumed without asking that they loved one another, even assumed that they were wed.

“It was at Winterfell,” she said after a moment’s awkward silence. “Jaime came North, with the threat of the dead, to pledge himself to fight with the living. It happened then.”

This Jaime nodded, a smile creeping up on one of the corners of his full lips. “As did I, though we went together, after Lady Stoneheart. As protectors to Lady Sansa.”

“Together?” Brienne heard herself whisper. “We – you went together?”

“Not … _together_. Not as lovers. There was propriety to contend with, and Hyle Hunt, and Podrick, and Lady Sansa. It was complicated. But I knew my feelings - I’d known them for a while if I am true to myself, as had you. _Her_. The more time we spent together …”

His eyes glittered in the light from the candles, Brienne noticed. There was a tremor in his breath.

“I wanted to wed her then. I planned to ask her – work out some way to dissolve my Kingsguard vows honourably, but then the world ended and … propriety and vows didn’t exist any more. Not for either of us.”

“Oh.”

“I hope that doesn’t shock you, my Lady?”

“Shock me?”

“That we consummated our love before we were wed?”

“No! No … not at all. I … it was much the same for us. In a way.”

He nodded. “You fought the dead, as well, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know. Life … all those moons, it seemed as though all life in the world clung on by its fingertips, did it not? Like the world might go dark forever, that all that would remain would be ice and cold and emptiness.”

He looked lost in the memories, shattered by them, Brienne thought. She was silent.

“Everyone kept their flames burning however they could. There was drink, and song for some, stories of home; some people broke down every night and let every emotion they had come to the surface. There were fights and feuds and hysterics for some … but Brienne and I … we … well, we had each other. We loved each other every night – whenever we slept, anyway. We would … be together, hold each other, tell each other again and again that we loved one another, that we had to live so we could be together.”

Brienne could hardly breathe. She could imagine it – the cold, the dark. Being with him, being with Jaime, being so in love with him at the end of all things.

“Was it the same for you?” he asked.

She closed her eyes. Shook her head. No matter how much she wanted it to be, it had not been anything like that at all. “No. Not … not the war against the dead, not _us_ , not anything.”

He looked surprised. A little upset, too.

“It happened … _after_ for us. The Long Night was not near so long in our world – it was a single night.”

“A single night?” he asked. “You don’t mean … a night that lasted for moons?”

She shook her head. “I mean a night. A single night. One battle. One place. The dead came for us at Winterfell, and Arya Stark … well, she stopped them. Killed the Night King with a single thrust of her dagger, and …”

“That is … quite different indeed. A Night King, you say?”

“Yes. Once he was felled, the army of the dead fell with him.”

A burst of laughter erupted from Jaime’s mouth. “Forgive me, my Lady, but … that sounds almost comically easy.”

Brienne nodded – he had just described moons and moons of terrible war. Cold and death everywhere. Compared to that, what they had faced at Winterfell _did_ seem quite easy. Hacking and slashing at waves of mindless dead for a few hours at most …

“After, there was a feast. A celebration and a mourning of those who had died. We drank a little too much, and …”

“Ah. You confessed your feelings?”

“Well, no, I mean we … well, it was more of a physical thing.”

“Oh. You lay with each other?”

“I … well, yes. We did.”

**~ Jaime ~**

He was a little shocked. He couldn’t lie – it was so very different from how he and Brienne had come together. Drunk at a feast and then bedding one another? Without so much as a declaration of their feelings?

She was older, he reminded himself. Most like she was more experienced, she had probably lain with other men throughout her life. Perhaps taking him, her eight-and-forty-year-old Jaime, to bed had not been such an occasion for her? Perhaps the declarations had come later.

“I wanted it,” she blurted. She looked quite flustered, he thought. Quite adorably like his Brienne, too. “I did. I wanted him.”

“Of course,” Jaime said. “I would not besmirch you for it.”

“I loved – I – I … I loved him.”

“I know you did, Brienne.”

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne blinked. He – he had called her by her name. It felt strange to hear his voice – Jaime’s voice …

“I know,” he said again. “I would never doubt that.”

But she had seen it on his face, that surprise that it had happened that way. It had surprised her, too.

Drunk, after a feast.

No wonder Bronn believed she would lay with any man she met in a tavern.

“We have been through much together,” Jaime said. “Perhaps it is destiny – Jaime and Brienne, in every one of these worlds of yours. I like that thought. Perhaps in one, somewhere, we are together still.”

“Perhaps,” she concurred.

They both sighed, sad and lonely.

“Though the gods alone know what we look like _there_. Probably you are short and I am raven-haired?”

Brienne had to laugh at that.

She knelt to pick up her armour stand, and fixed her armour back to it. She fumbled her pauldron and he caught it, beside her suddenly.

“How fares your head, Ser?” she asked, looking to see she had not left a noticeable bump amid his cascade of golden curls. “I must apologise, I …”

“Tis fine,” he bragged. “It was a glancing blow, at best.”

“A glancing blow?” She scoffed; she had caught him hard enough to near knock the thing from her hand.

“We Lannisters may have excellent bone structure, but it does not mean we are delicate things. It would take more than that to injure me, I promise.”

She snorted.

He shook his head. “You just didn’t hit me very hard. There’s no shame in it! I had you pinned.”

“Pinned? I had an arm free.”

“Only because of this accursed stump.”

He was helping her with her armour, she noticed. Buckling the breastplate back to the stand, far more efficiently than Cayson or Cayle, despite his “accursed stump”.

Gods. He was so close to her. So close to her, and the scent of him …

He _was_ Jaime. The smell of him, the heat of him, the feel of him. So close she could pull him into her arms, pull his lips against hers, slide her tongue into his mouth and she would be with Jaime again.

Again they had fallen silent. Again, they stared at each other.

**~ Jaime ~**

“This is … uh, different,” he remarked, turning away and forcing a cheery grin. “The armour of the Kingsguard?”

“Yes,” she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Tis not at all like the Kingsguard wear for Jon.” He brought his hand up to trace the lines of the design on the breastplate. The breastplate he had collided with just two days ago. Put his hand on. “A … bird of some sort?”

“The three-eyed raven,” she told him in Brienne’s soft voice. “The sigil of Bran the Broken.”

“Tis handsome,” he told her. His eyes went to the swordbelt as she re-sheathed Oathkeeper, or her version of it, at least. “Wait,” he bade her. “Oathkeeper is not Valyrian steel?”

“What? It is!” she pulled the sword back out from its scabbard, moving the blade back and forth in the candlelight to show him the ripples in the steel.

“Ah,” he said. “The hilt is the same, but the blade is not red. My father did not …”

“A _red_ blade?”

“Yes! Red, rippled with black. It is a most striking appearance. I regretted not being able to have the dagger match it.”

He fetched the dagger from where he had dropped it to the bed. Held it out to her so that she might add it back to her armour.

She reached out a hand, but hesitated at the final second. “Are you sure that you wish me to keep this?”

Jaime nodded immediately. Of course he did – it was Brienne’s dagger, and she was Brienne, was she not? “Did your Jaime not give you one of these? Twas a betrothal gift, of sorts. A survival gift. A token of my love.”

She shook her head. Perhaps since they had had considerably less to survive …

“It’s beautiful,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “The design …”

“Wait,” he said, a sudden realisation interrupting them. “This is _your_ armour. _Your_ sword. And the dagger is here … does this mean I am the one who has travelled to _your_ world?”

She blinked – looked about the room, her blue eyes sharp and keen – the hardened warrior again. “No. Not entirely. Look – look at the bed.”

The bed was in disarray. Sheets untucked, pillows askew. On the side where Brienne had lain, two white linen pillows; on Jaime’s, two crimson silk ones. The top sheets were embroidered with lions and starbursts. The bottom ones were plain white: it was a mixture of his linens and hers.

Jaime walked to the bed. Peered at it intently and then ran his finger up one of the tall posts. “We have the same bed, I suppose?”

She nodded. Reached out to touch the embroidered lions on one of his pillows. “Different sheets.”

On Jaime’s side, a flagon of wine sat on the bedside table, the one he had asked his servants to keep full, night and day. One of his hairclips sat there, too, and a bottle of hair oil.

“I believe that’s my wine,” he said. He could not imagine Brienne as a midnight drinker, not in any world.

“Yes – I – I believe so.”

“Then … this room seems to be a combination of our worlds, wouldn’t you say? This half being mine and this half yours?”

**~ Brienne ~**

Brienne nodded in agreement. Ran a hand over the soft silk of the sheets. “It looks that way.”

Jaime poured a glass of wine. “Can I offer you a drink, my lady?”

“Please,” she nodded. She looked around the room again, noticing a discarded pair of boots in fine black leather, too small to fit her own feet. Seeing that some of the candles in the wall sconces were red as well, and scented with some sort of spice.

The goblet he had picked up was similar to the one she had found on her desk a few days ago. A lion curled about the stem in place of a sword.

“This is most strange,” she breathed. She moved to the window, where the shutters were fastened against the cityscape beyond.

“It is,” he concurred, holding out her wine glass, crossing the room to join her. “I don’t understand it at all.”

“Has it happened across the city?” she wondered. “Have things become --?” She pulled open the shutters.

Behind her, the sound of breaking glass.

She span, to see the goblet Jaime had been holding shattered on the floor, the wine spilt in a puddle and a splash.

Just like that, Jaime was gone.

**~ Jaime ~**

His hand was empty. Brienne was gone.

The shutters swang where she had opened them. Banged once against the wall.

Outside, the city looked much the same as it always did—candlelight in the windows, torches in the yard below. Across the bailey, the drawbridge over the dry moat to Maegor’s Holdfast was patrolled by Kingsguard wearing Aegon Targaryen’s sigil. Ravens flew from the tower, banners flapped in the wind.

In the nursery, Mykael cried.

“Brienne?” he whispered.

Her armour stand was gone. His dressing table was back. The bed had red sheets, and the candle he had lit was his favourite scarlet spice.

That was all he could smell. All the heat he could feel, too. Brienne was not in the room, not even the ghost of her, the feeling of her.

Just like that, she was gone.

Jaime went back around the bed. Poured himself a glass of wine. Waited for a moment, in case she came back.

She did not.

Mykael stopped crying. Jaime could hear Selwyn, walking up and down the hallway with the babe, talking to him softly, hushing him and soothing him.

Jaime opened the door. Crept out into the corridor, tentative and in the shadows. A ghost himself, as he had been these first five weeks of his son’s life. Selwyn pressed a finger to his lips and turned to show that Mykael’s eyes were closing. His eyes …

Jaime swallowed hard. He had just seen those eyes. Had just looked up into them, in a way he never thought he ever would again. The rest of her had looked quite different, but her eyes … her _eyes_.

Jaime smiled at his goodfather. Beckoned to him.

Lord Selwyn approached, bobbing and swaying on his toes to keep Mykael soothed and sleepy.

“Could I … can I hold him?” Jaime whispered.

Selwyn’s eyes went wide. “You wish to?”

Jaime nodded. He couldn’t speak – his throat closed, tight, so tight he could barely even breathe.

Carefully, tenderly, Selwyn slipped Mykael into his father’s arms. The babe fussed a little, screwed up his face and let out a slight wail. Of course he did – these arms were but a stranger’s to him. He did not want Jaime; he wanted his mother.

For a moment, Jaime wanted to fling him back at Selwyn, run as far as he could, as fast as he could manage. But Mykael mouthed at his fist, yawned, and snuggled closer to the warmth of Jaime’s chest hair. With his shirt untied, the babe could feel the warmth of his skin, hear the beat of his heart. Jaime had been told once that babes liked that.

Mykael sighed, contented, and fell back asleep.

Happy. Perfectly happy in his father’s arms. Jaime smiled down at his son, and cried the first tears of happiness he had cried in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many apologies for the length of time this took to write. I wasn't well and then had to get used to new medication, and then it was time to write my entries for the Smut Exchange.
> 
> Many, many thanks are due to the wonderful Aviss, who so kindly offered to read this chapter when I was freaking out about it and instantly managed to spot the things that weren't working and set me right. Thanks too to jencat for giving it a second read during my second freakout about it and put my mind at ease. As you can tell, this chapter has been a bit of a struggle!
> 
> Hoping to get back on the horse with a regular posting schedule again now, so if you'd like to get updates and teasers in the interim, please come follow me on Twitter [@StupidLannister](https://twitter.com/StupidLannister) or Tumblr [@catherineflowers29](https://catherineflowers29.tumblr.com/).


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